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No, often when people think about technology they are thinking about computers, and how society has changed under the influence of computer technology. In that sense computers have enhanced preexisting technology, but haven't replaced technology at all. Automobiles are enhanced through computers, and are more responsive and safer because of them, but still use mechanical parts. PCs still need fans to cool them down, though the thermostat that determines when that fan turns on and is used still has to use analogy technology at some point. Washing machines are more sophisticated, and have touch buttons and no analog knobs or switches, but the process of agitating the clothing is still using technology from about a hundred years ago.

Technology is an outgrowth of the needs of modern society, at any point throughout the course of history. Civilizations in Europe, Asia and Africa found innovative ways to automate and enhance autonomy in ways that we still do not fully understand or can comprehend. If we were to annihilate ourselves through nuclear war, chemical weapons or any other means, we would still find ways to rebuild all over again, and worse yet, find even more innovative ways to kill and destroy in the future.

We are not anymore a slave technology now than we may have been thousands of years ago. Societies are connected, and more information is being shared and you can formulate such an argument around that; as data warehouses in various companies around the world still contain valuable information that can be used for the prosperity and wealth of society, to enrich it and make our lives easier, or through Darwinian, dystopian means in which the only power that exists is through access to knowledge. We have an overload of information, and it is increasingly harder to focus on any one thing because of the many diversions we have; mp3, mp4, avi, jpg and other file storage formats are used merely to store music, video, sound, all of which is broken down to data through digital means but none of which in and of itself is actually information.

Society has had to learn how to retrain itself to think about multimedia and information that was once difficult to access, as the flood gates have been released and anyone with an Internet connection and a Wi-Fi hotspot can get whatever they want for free, it seems. The Internet has went from a novelty hobbyists might pay $5 a minute to access to something that is free on notebooks, and now routes telephone calls and cable television. Text messages can be sent to anyone for pennies, and there is no rational reason why anyone would be left out of the new Golden Age of information.

Society is not controlled by technology; man attempts to use technology as a shortcut to controlling the masses, it would seem. Yet how significant of an argument is this, how much can this argument really be proven to be correct if not for the differing opinions on how technology is to be used. Innovations in information technology were always used for certain purposes long before computing technology was even thought of, since the beginning of time. Every modern society is built upon a government that in entrusted to do just that, in order to free the people from having to deal with certain responsibilities of governing themselves, the only conflict being when the interests of the two are at odds. Technology will always be with us, no matter what happens, but we still have an ethical responsibility to use it properly, regardless of what happens ...

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