By technology I mean the knowledge to manipulate nature to achieve some desirable end. I do not mean scientific knowledge in general. Descartes said we would become the 'masters of own destiny'.
The obvious plus, I suppose, is medicine. An effective painkiller for surgery is only about 150 years old. Antibiotics less than a century. Imagine getting appendicitis before all that. In WW1 at least they had ether if your leg or arm had to come off. But a gut wound meant you were likely to die from infection. In the US Civil War they cut off limbs while you were conscious. Yeesh!
On the other hand some of the intended and unintended 'benefits' of technology threaten human extinction and have already caused death and suffering on scales previous generations could not imagine. In purely economic terms parts of the world have been lifted out of poverty. Capitalism is sometimes praised for this. But the benefits we enjoy today have been built on the backs of people who lived lives of child labor and back breaking work in industry for poor wages. Unintentionally we have changed the environment so that the future of humanity is in doubt.
Overall, would you give up the benefits of technology to avoid it's negative effects?
The obvious plus, I suppose, is medicine. An effective painkiller for surgery is only about 150 years old. Antibiotics less than a century. Imagine getting appendicitis before all that. In WW1 at least they had ether if your leg or arm had to come off. But a gut wound meant you were likely to die from infection. In the US Civil War they cut off limbs while you were conscious. Yeesh!
On the other hand some of the intended and unintended 'benefits' of technology threaten human extinction and have already caused death and suffering on scales previous generations could not imagine. In purely economic terms parts of the world have been lifted out of poverty. Capitalism is sometimes praised for this. But the benefits we enjoy today have been built on the backs of people who lived lives of child labor and back breaking work in industry for poor wages. Unintentionally we have changed the environment so that the future of humanity is in doubt.
Overall, would you give up the benefits of technology to avoid it's negative effects?
