3 of 34

Write now Article Tools

Any technology changes society. And it's important to realize that, if we'd known about all consequences of the change in advance, we'd have most likely rejected it.

Consider the average citizen of the most developed nations in 1905. She or he would know about airplanes, dirigibles, very large battleships, but would not have seen a real one, and woiuld certainly not imagine the horror of being attacked by one from far away or high in the air. She or he would know about the many advances in chemical technology but would not dream they would ever be used to gas humans in trenches. She or he would know about rivet construction of ships but would not have thought of "tanks" rolling across the land with guns blazing, crushing men beneath. But ten years later all these things had happened.

Forty years later, more chemicals had been used to gas nearly a whole people to death. Subatomic manipulations had yielded horrifying radiation effects and bombs big enough to level cities, leaving tens of thousands to rot away and die of the long term radiation poisoning, and the certainly of a whole world held hostage. At least thirty million people, mostly civilians, lay dead. A country that had fought only one significant naval battle by 1905, Japan, had nearly conquered the Pacific, and wrought horrible deaths on many Chinese and prisoners of war. And this wasn't yet the end of the horror.

Sixty years later, the world had been through several nuclear standoffs and had seen US Presidents shot, Soviet premiers deposed, and movies made mocking the end of the world with accurate and chilling detail. Nihilism reigned and the world was split into warring camps. Children were growing up knowing the entire biosphere could be eradicated by a simple error, so untrusting were the two camps that claimed absolute right for their economic system to rule the world. And this wasn't the end either.

By eighty years later, 1985, proxy wars were being fought in many poor countries as helpless civilians were exterminated by almost any side in Latin America and Africa. Terrorism grew as a tactic and then as a strategy, even became a lifestyle, and the countries that claimed the most innocence were now its major funder, sponsor and trainer. The School of the Americas in the USA trained many dictators' torturers and killers. Another proxy war had been fought in faraway Afghanistan - at least, far away for everyone but Afghans.

By a hundred years later, 2005, we were seeing genetic modification of insects,

• 1
• 2
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about Technology's impact on society?
We want to hear your view. Write now!