Technology, Good or Bad Overall?

[Aegon]

If I could, I'd have forced an end to progress on some consumer-facing technology a few years ago. I personally think smart phone usage and social media have had a profoundly negative impact on us.

[Anomalocaris]

If I could, I'd have forced an end to progress on some consumer-facing technology a few years ago. I personally think smart phone usage and social media have had a profoundly negative impact on us.

Yet you have no idea, and couldn’t possibly have any idea, what positive impact may eventuate from any technology and progress in applied science could result from continued investment in smartphone technology and infrastructure.

[Macoleco]

I consider technology to always be something good.

If it creates damage it is because of the primitive nature of the humans. Technology may change this, though.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

If I could, I'd have forced an end to progress on some consumer-facing technology a few years ago. I personally think smart phone usage and social media have had a profoundly negative impact on us.

Yet you have no idea, and couldn’t possibly have any idea, what positive impact may eventuate from any technology and progress in applied science could result from continued investment in smartphone technology and infrastructure.

This from the guy who cast aspersions at the idea of spinoff technology from the Apollo programme.

Boru

[ignoramus]

Whether we like it or not, we live in a technocracy.

Like a theocracy but silicon and AI is our all powerful god who enslaves us.
Shit, gotta go! Haven't checked my facebook for like .....3 whole fucking minutes!

[Anomalocaris]

Yet you have no idea, and couldn’t possibly have any idea, what positive impact may eventuate from any technology and progress in applied science could result from continued investment in smartphone technology and infrastructure.

This from the guy who cast aspersions at the idea of spinoff technology from the Apollo programme.

Boru

Yes, perhaps you are wishful enough to think there is a contradiction?

Apollo diverts research subsidy that would probably have focused on achieving something of commensurate anticipated direct practical benefit to something else with more appeal but less practical benefit, in the hopes that unanticipated practical benefit will incidentally result to cover the shortfall.   Apollo doesn’t necessarily represent  net change to resource devoted to research,  But a shift of resources from more direct and efficient application to more wishful and  less efficient application.

The proposal here wishes not to redirect subsidy from one research topic to another.   Rather it seeks to terminate a research project that would have paid for itself from its own results.   So its termination represents not a shift of resource applied to research, but a net deduction in resources applied to research.

[ColdComfort]

You haven't adequately framed the question.

That's for sure. And it's a game, the reality being that technology cannot be stopped. The only rule of the game I'm imposing om myself is that you have to take the history of technology as is. 

I would return to somewhere early 19th c. like in N. America or England, just before the industrial revolution took off. Most of us would be farmers or work in supportive trades. I'd have to give up modern medicine including painkillers, electricity, cars and a whole slew of useful things. Maybe it's urbanisation I don't like so much but mainly it's the real possibility of humanity's suicide.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Technology is responsible for the blather on the Internet. It may have good points as well.

[Aegon]

If I could, I'd have forced an end to progress on some consumer-facing technology a few years ago. I personally think smart phone usage and social media have had a profoundly negative impact on us.

Yet you have no idea, and couldn’t possibly have any idea, what positive impact may eventuate from any technology and progress in applied science could result from continued investment in smartphone technology and infrastructure.

That's okay with me.

[Fake Messiah]

Thing is that humans are technological species. Our ancestors, like Homo Erectus, discovered fire and relied on technology too much that we now can't survive without it. Our jaws are too weak to chew unprocessed food, our bodies can't sustain body temperature without clothes and so on.

I guess the problem today is that technological progress seems to be jammed by people who are afraid of progress.
Progress should obviously be concentrated on replacing oil and cleaning up the world, but it's not.