“Technology will solve our problems”

Some of us have put an enormous amount of faith into this idea that no matter what the problem we face, there’s a technology that could be invented to solve it.

And for a lot of things, that is totally true.

Once the car was in mass productions we needed roads, traffic lights, gas stations, parts for repairs, mechanics, laws, driver’s ed, highway patrol, driver’s licenses, DMVs, plow trucks…the list just keeps going on and on.

But this isn’t what technology wants. Technology doesn’t really want, well, anything. Technology doesn’t care if the world is heating up by two degrees. Technology doesn’t feel the same urgency to solve problems as humans do. It isn’t on the clock to change.

And ss fast as technology has evolved, problems evolve faster.

(Reckless driving, drunk driving, high emission vehicles, oil dependency, environmental hazards…)

Tech doesn’t exist to solve our problems. We do.

As great and wonderful as technology has been to us, it is now creating more problems than it is able to solve. At least at the moment.

Because technology doesn’t change behavior, it amplifies it.