The Two-Edged Sword of Technology
Daniel Hastings, Ian Hutchinson
October 1, 1996
Imagine a person born in New Testament times who is somehow transported two hundred years into the future. That individual will find a world largely unchanged in the technology of everyday living. Our time traveler will know what a chariot is, how to get to another place by boat or by walking, how warfare is waged, and so on. The pace of life is relatively slow, and the pace of technological change is also slow. Now undertake the same experiment with a person living as an adult in 1796 who is suddenly transported to 1996. He or she might be able to recognize the modern car as a kind of horseless carriage. The idea of flying to the other side of the world at 137,000 feet in sixteen hours, however, will be completely alien. Picking up a phone and immediately talking to a person in another part of the world, or listening to perfect sound on a digital CD, will be like magic. The idea of watching events in real time at great distances through the use of television by way of signals bounced from distant satellites will be astonishing. Similarly, the eradication of many dread diseases of the eighteenth century—thanks to sophisticated drugs—will seem miraculous. While the idea of sending armies great distances to fight will not be strange, the concepts of the battle tank, the cruise missile, the nuclear submarine, and the precision-guided munition will represent an unthinkable level of power and destructive ability. This thought experiment illustrates how the rate of technological change has accelerated, especially over the last century. The acceleration has led to a "giddiness" over the very idea of technology and technological change and a consequent understandable, and probably justified, malaise. Most of the examples we cite above ...
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