In the Shadow of Progress: Being Human in the Age of Technology

The wonders of progress are all around us, so commonplace that we usually take them for granted. Moved by curiosity and compassion, we have built a world that satisfies many deep human needs, especially the desire not to stand so naked in the face of nature's many malignancies. To cancer, we say chemotherapy; to infertility, we say in vitro; to depression, we say Prozac. Without technology, man is impotent, and only a fool would romanticize the age when mothers and children died regularly in childbirth, when keeping warm and staying fed were life's central struggles, and when the visible afflictions of the body had no other explanation except the hatred of the gods. Of modern progress, there is much to be proud.