Technopessimism is Bunk.................

So says this essay from Joel Mokyr.  While us humans and our nature haven't advanced as much as our technology and, as history shows, we are quite capable of creating significant messes, the problem is not technology.  A few excerpts:

"He too foresees new technologies creating new jobs, the nature of which we cannot yet even imagine. After all, technology's double-edged sword -- that new inventions create new problems, such as labor force disruption -- is what constantly pushes us to further innovate."

"For thousands of years, people dreamed of having sex without worrying about pregnancy. The unintended consequence of widely-used contraception, however, is the relentless aging of societies. With fewer new births and higher life expectancies, there are now fewer people of working age to support a rising percentage of retirees. But technology is now responding to that consequence, developing to make mature persons more productive citizens (think knee replacements and bypass surgery). Aging is not what it used to be."

"So it is hard for someone alive today to imagine what future generations will make of our age. But to judge from progress in the past decades, it seems that the Digital Age may become to the Analog Age what the Iron Age was to the Stone Age. It will not last as long, and there is no way of knowing what will come after. But experience suggests that the metaphor of low-hanging fruit is misleading. Technology creates taller and taller ladders, and the higher-hanging fruits are within reach and may be just as juicy."

thanks craig