I've come to some sort of conclusiony idea about all this

[Nast]

It seems today in modern society, with everything being mass-produce and requiring to be plugged in and wired up, that people eventually crave a sort of authenticity.

This search for authentic experience, outside of a plastic and artificial world, seems unique to developed nations. What other countries see for example, as merely mundane daily life, we see as "quaint" and "ideal" and "rustic". It's sort of like when people see those shows on TV about remote tribes in Africa, and exclaim to themselves "Oh! What a peaceful life they must live, at one with nature, without the woes of modern life, taxes, and the stress of constantly having to manage my iPhone! Oh, woe is me!" The low-tech life is seen as more attractive, while in reality those tribes are constantly at struggle  to even scrap out a living, and will probably die out of cholera.
Maybe it's a sort of common nostalgia, maybe it's a case of "the grass is always greener".

[Jasper]

Maybe people just don't like taxes, police, pollution, mean city people, commuting, shitty junk food, overpriced mediocre food, and stiflingly small living spaces.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

My dream is to build a castle with lodestone magnets built into the walls.

I initially read this as "lodestone midgets" and it made my night.

[Cainad (dec.)]

 

[Richter]

Maybe people just don't like taxes, police, pollution, mean city people, commuting, shitty junk food, overpriced mediocre food, and stiflingly small living spaces.

They don't.  I sure as hell don't.
Things have a way of looking MUCH better than they actually are when you 're in need of them and they're in yuor face.  Cities are very good at putting things in your face. 

A term for it read awhile back was the "Ghetto Tax".  It's when you get things in an over priced, un - sustainable manner in order to get them quickly.  Like when you have no bank account, so you pay for a check cashing service, or have no car so you pay for a Taxi to get 2 miles to buy groceries, and so forth.

Like Jim Bowie said, "it's a crooked game, but it's the only game in town."
   
This is both failure of society to NOT oppress people, and failure of people to have the reserve and discipline to walk around the traps.   

Relating back to the topic, technology in itself can be both a help, and a thing people chase after.  Fun shiny tools, but traps if you let them be.

[Cain]

Technology can also be the trap itself.

"Anything that can help humanity can harm it."

In the 50s, they used to perform lobotomies and electro-shock therapy in order to change the ways people thought.  To make sure they only thought in socially accepable ways.  The Soviets did the same, using drugs and torture to 'break' people so that they would not resist the Bolshevik regime.

They failed, but only because their theories were wrong.  People are not blank slates, mentally, and while such treatment shatters the mind, it doesn't change the basic forms beneath it.  People would be disabled, suffer from debilitating psychosomatic symptoms, have permament memory loss...essentially be unable to cope within modern society.

Technology would serve a better purpose of finding out why people change their minds, the limits of such changes, why the brain rejects being 're-written' etc to see to what extent it is possible to transform the human mind before any more attempts at changing it do happen.

[East Coast Hustle]

Name one activity or aspect of life that is not altered or caused by modern technology.

...excretion....

what, you just poop in the middle of the yard?

[Jasper]

Like hell, that lawn was mowed by technology.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Name one activity or aspect of life that is not altered or caused by modern technology.

...excretion....

what, you just poop in the middle of the yard?

How recent is your cutoff for "modern" technology? The flush toilet has been around for several hundred years.

[Jasper]

But the scaled manufacturing methods for making the parts inside of it haven't.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The only way that affects my life is that when the mechanism inside my current toilet finally give up the ghost, I will be able to replace them for $12 instead of $40. That impacts my pocketbook, not my day to day functioning.

Are you familiar with the parts inside a typical toilet? Bone-simple. It's a couple of valves, a tube, and a float.

[Jasper]

Yeah, but the point is that if everything had to be manufactured the old fashioned way, everytyhing would cost way too much to live the way we do.

Edit:  You think a shitter would be too expensive, computers are right out.

The whole point is that it's mass-information, economies of scale, and technology that pervade the way we live and think.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yeah, but the point is that if everything had to be manufactured the old fashioned way, everytyhing would cost way too much to live the way we do.

Edit:  You think a shitter would be too expensive, computers are right out.

Not true. Remember Ford? The mechanization and offshoring of all manufacture is tanking our economy. If manufactured goods were still made the long slow way by hand, they would cost a great deal more because they would require more labor by more laborers. I don't think I need to go on, it's an old principle that most people are familiar with.

And you making the link from shitter to computers is a straw man in this particular discussion.

[Jasper]

Pretty much, but it it illustrates my point easily enough.  And mechanization doesn't hurt the economy, it's just outsourcing that does.  And outsourcing is something any sane government would inhibit to some degree, imo. 

Class, bbs.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I don't think technology helps or harms society... it's just a bunch of tools. Communication is still communication, if we use technology to communicate faster... its just a tool. Making stuff is still making stuff, but technology can help make it cheaper, faster and more consistent. Of course, technology could be used to interrupt communication, or to impede the making of stuff, if its in the hands of people willing to use it in that manner.

Bush may spy on our phone calls, but Abe Lincoln read our mail... what's the real difference?