Is humanity obsessed with technology?

Yes

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by Dumitru Condrea

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Humans were always obsessed with technology. It's what places us above the other beings inhabiting the Earth: the ability to think beyond our daily needs, to modify our surroundings and forge our own creations. It's important to note that prehistory itself (the evolution of humanity before the invention of writing) always starts with the emergence of the labor tools. But before the anthropologists could ascertain the chronology of the Stone Age, they needed a couple of definitive criterions that would separate humans from monkeys, or in other words - to find that evolutionary stage when our ancestors were more similar to us, than to monkeys. Among those 3 factors we find "the hand adapted to the labor process", the other two being "bipedal walking" and "a well-developed brain". As a result, technology is what defines being human.

In addition, all the prehistorical stages are named, in most scientifical circles, according to the material used in that age to produce weapons and tools: Stone, Bronze and Iron. As we can see, humans couldn't evolve without technology, even though it took them 1 million years to reach the Bronze Age. Our thempo keeps accelerating actually. We only needed 6 thousand years to shift from ceramics and stone cultures to our current civilization. Even in the relatively stagnant Middle Age there were plenty of inventions, be it in agriculture, military equipment or other areas.

As for the engine that keeps us inventing the new and improving the existing - it couldn't be more simple. We have long since we surpassed the limitations of the environment where we live. We've also improved our teamwork when wanting to achieve common goals. So why aren't we stopping at our current level of technology and live the way we are? Besides the demographical explosion, humans always strived to make their lives as easier and comfortable as possible, similarly to the way lower social classes tend to take/steal the places from the higher ones. If in the past, people worked 12 hours per day, today it doesn't go higher than 7-8 hours, for example. It's a known fact that we work hard thinking we'll live someday without problems, doing only what we want to accomplish. In short, we're a civilization of slackers: it was tiring to plough the land by ourselves and so we invented the animal traction; it was hard to find food in the dry season, and consequently we implemented artificial irrigation...

Humanity has become obsessed with technology, because it wants the latter to replace us, the humans, in the production process, so we could live without worries and in the same time control the said process, even though indirectly. After World War II, though, we've stepped in a new weird era. A large part of our tech is now directed towards recreational purposes (cellphones, TVs, the movie and video game industry etc) or integration of both work and recreation (transport, PCs, robotics and so on). It's proof that people are spending more and more time without creating something: we have more time to socialize, thus we have more cellphones; we have more time to travel, thus we see more cars on the roads etc. Add there the human tendency to always be up-to-date, to be the first, to be informed, and you'll see the complete puzzle. We're selfish and lazy; we only buy stuff that makes our life easier and makes us look better than the others.

Unfortunately, humanity's obsession with technology could lead to its extinction. That's why the next logical step would be a new society, where each social class will have limited use of technology, and only the top of the pyramid will possess it unconditionally. After every leap, there must be a period of stagnation.

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