Occasionally I'm surprised at the little pockets of "anti-tech" that pop up in the HN crowd. Perhaps we just burn out on tech sometimes? People forget what a b

Occasionally I'm surprised at the little pockets of "anti-tech" that pop up in the HN crowd. Perhaps we just burn out on tech sometimes? People forget what a boon to human kind, to the human mind such things like inexpensive artificial light, mechanized temperature control, industrial farming and manufacturing and such really are. Its fun to play at virtue by switching off the AC and popping open window (thinking that the AC is some sort of sin of weakness) while completely forgetting that you've never had malaria because AC is ubiquitous in your area. We are, perhaps, rightly gun-shy of trusting too much in technology because of some last century's indiscretions, but I don't think that a return to the age of cholera is the solution. At some point, we're going to have to get over it and have some hope again that we can use the fantastic tools of human science to start fixing some the the big problems. That's a long way of saying that the answer is not to turn off the AC (and smugly tell the developing world that they're not allowed to have it either), the answer is to find a better way to power everyone's AC without doing the damage to our world that it previously did. We are up to the challenge.