H. Dziardziel wrote in
:


Being that my posting was meant facetiously, I'd say that you are in
need of a Valium.

As you have broached the topic, I'll go for it though. Is society
actually better off due to the technology that it possesses?

As mankind makes antiserums and vaccinations, the Military labs in
America, Russia, and elsewhere assiduously labor to create new incurable
menaces.

As Society labors to build, the various militaries labor to destroy.
Bigger and better nuclear weapons, bunker piercing bombs, EMP bombs,
remote control aircraft, microwave weapons, etc.

It's quite likely that modern weapons have resulted in more deaths than
the sum of all deaths from conventional weapons in the days of yore.
Wholesale slaughter of people, genocide if you will, or at least
attempts at such.

Yes, we owe much to DARPA and similar initiatives. They have made life
much better for those that have been lucky enough to have survived to
this point. But what do we have yet to see?

Do you think that America is better off as we exploit technology to
bring pornography into American homes at an unprecedented rate? Isn't it
unfortunate that the technology that you so acclaim is more often put to
ignoble or superfluous uses than to be put toward the betterment of
mankind? Do we need cell phones that capture images, whose major use is
becoming surreptitiously photographing people in bathrooms and gym
dressing rooms. Do we need to send images and text to each other even
though the person we are sending it to is driving a car and is not
responsible enough to be more concerned about the lives of others than
the latest scoop on some dating tryst. Are TV games mind liberating or
mind destroying?

I do believe that it is questionable that we are better off.

The jury is still out, and the verdict will probably be a close call.

Merry Christmas and Happy Chanukah.




Thank the stars liberal luddites like you who nevertheless use
DARPA's internet and all manner of other technology from defense,
space and medical research and including the electronics in your
shortwave receiver and computer, were unable to stop early
explorers from venturing across and into the seas.



--
To know and to be, this is not even a question, there is no alternative.
You see it clearly in the loneliest little avenues between particles and
waves, shunned even by the gregarious quark and unknown by the various
strands of time, so big it cannot be seen, yet so little it is
immovable, lies the fabric of the ultimate reality gripped in the tiny
fist of the all or nothing."