Wednesday 4 August 2010

The religion of technology

Now I know you'll say this is what you expect from the Guardian, but I think it's an interesting point, and one I've agreed with for many years now:

If there is one true religion in the US, it leads us to worship at the altar of technology. Christian or Jew, Muslim or atheist, we accept the doctrine of this shared faith: that technology provides the main path to improving our lives and that if it occasionally fails, even catastrophically, it will just take another technology to make it all better.
As a society, we do seem to have this blind faith in science and technology. The news says "top scientists have developed/discovered/etc." as if they're the high priests of our religion. True, some new technologies appear to help the environment, using less energy and recycling resources, but we aren't selective - the overall picture is always more, faster, better. This endless growth can't continue on a finite planet, so we'd either better start mining asteroids or figure out a way to get off our technology addiction...

Mike

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