These are two sides of a rather naive understanding of technology that is yet surprisingly common in "tech". Technology is neither good, nor bad, nor neutral.

These are two sides of a rather naive understanding of technology that is yet surprisingly common in "tech". Technology is neither good, nor bad, nor neutral. Its value is relative. Technology is a means to an end. If you find the end good, and the technology helps towards that, it's good for you. If you find the end bad, and the technology helps towards that, it's bad for you. Some amount of additional complexity comes from unpredictable consequences of technologies — while someone develops a technology to reach a certain end they wish for, they might inadvertently lead the world towards a different end they don't want as much or even are actively against. But technology is just a modality of change, a way change happens. And change is neither "good" nor "bad." Some people in technology endorse a "progress" narrative according to which technology is good. It just means that it goes towards an end they like. That something can be used to do both good and bad doesn't make it "neutral", either. That would mean it has no valence (and probably no influence). Instead, it's both good and bad at the same time for different groups of people. The atomic bomb, which can arguably be used for "good" and "bad" isn't "neutral." It creates strong path dependence. Now humanity is in a timeline where atomic bombs exist, which is different from ones where they don't. And we can't ever go back to a different timeline (barring some weird time travel shenanigans). Is it a better timeline? Maybe, maybe not. It seems like it's a more interesting one, in the same sense that people wish others "may you live in interesting times."