Is Modern Technology Killing Us?

"Science now makes all things possible . . . but it does not thereby make all possible things desirable." - Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine

The first thing I'd like to say about modern technology is this: I'd be dead without it. So would my son, surgically delivered and hospitalized for jaundice, and so too most of the people I know who at some point or another have stamped out life-threatening infections with antibiotics. As I pen this screed, I'm mindful of the fact that a good deal fewer than 7 billion humans could survive on this planet without the machinery, fuel, communications and computation devices that are the blood and backbone of contemporary civilization. But the fact that technology has enabled the human population to grow to 7 billion doesn't necessarily mean that it can sustain this many of us forever. To assume that it will, without examining its (and our) vulnerabilities, is reckless.

The problem with technology is that most innovations have unintended consequences, and those unintended consequences are piling up, causing harm and...