It's really a fascinating phenomena when you think about it. Technology has warped and dominated our world and culture to an extent it never has before. I lik

It's really a fascinating phenomena when you think about it. Technology has warped and dominated our world and culture to an extent it never has before. I like to imagine a little scene: a primitive man bows at the feet of another who fashioned a knife out of a mammoth tooth. That's more or less what we still do today. The technological and scientific have replaced the religious as the ruling dogma and organizational frameworks of the world. Just as many folks in the middle ages probably couldn't conceive of the radical changes that would happen were religious hegemony toppled, it's hard for us to conceive of a world where the ruling technological caste loses their influence. But what a wild world it might be. What bothers me the most about our current age is our lack of questioning when it comes to technological progress. We have a sort of close your eyes and jump philosophy when it comes to technology--we seem to go ahead and create new technologies before a. considering the full scope of their possible effects, and b. developing the requisite social, political, and economic structures to support the shifts they'll bring about (e.g. in the case of self driving cars and automation of work in general we will have to switch to an economic model other than capitalism if we are against a very slim few having the majority of the world's wealth, more so than is already the case, which is hard to imagine.) Of course, it's not possible to predict all of the side effects introducing new technology will have--for example, I doubt Tim had any notion of the extent to which the internet would change the world when he came up with an idea that let you view the documents your buddy had on his machine, but here we are. Still, I think we have a bad tendency to accelerate change in the technological sphere while social, political, and economic structures remain woefully antiquated.