Futile Argument With a Neo-Luddite

“What good has technology done for us, really? We’re all living our separate lives, isolated from each other behind our computers and phones. I think we should all go back to how it was before all these gadgets came into our lives and start living simply again, with nature.”

“What good has it done? It’s cured us of many once-fatal diseases and helped extend our lives by decades. It’s created foods that can survive where almost nothing would grow before. It’s made it possible for people to communicate in realtime around the world, and even offworld. We can travel around the world in under a day, something that would’ve been almost inconceivable not that long ago. It’s empowering individuals and providing numerous opportunities that did not exist before. With the internet, someone who makes good music can sell it himself, directly to fans, without dealing with a middleman that takes most of the profit. People with good ideas can start a business and make millions. I can sit in my house, press a button on my computer, and set in motion a chain of events that results in people in various parts of the planet working together to deliver a package to my door.”

“Well, I still don’t like it.”

“And as for your desire to live in the past—because of the absence of all these improvements, life in the past was hard and short. People didn’t live long, and those that did didn’t have a very good time of it. Technology exists to make our lives easier. Do some people use it too much and let it interfere with other important parts of their lives? Probably, yes, but that’s true with just about everything. Don’t worry about those people. If some form of technology makes your life easier and lets you spend more time on more important things, use it. If it makes things more difficult or gets in the way of things you want to do, don’t use it, or limit its use so that it doesn’t get in the way.”