Can man be trusted with technology?

Um. No?

Do you think the world was a better place before TV and the Internet? Racism and misogyny were widespread; most people were poorly educated and had no access to knowledge.

Even military expertise (precision, at least) has made the world a better place. Look at the casualty counts of modern wars. World War 2 destroyed pretty much all of Europe and killed tens of millions of innocent people. Vietnam killed 3 million civilians. In Iraq, perhaps 30,000 civilians have been killed by direct military action, and the number is even lower in Afghanistan.

There are also far less regional wars fought today than in times past. The world was basically in a state of constant warfare up until the late 1900’s.

It seems like a moot point since man invents technology and so has access to it.

The question is…..are these inventions where the good outweighes the bad?

“Military expertise” is not an invention. It’s a condition to which military folks (and states) have aspired for millenia, and to which they still aspire. There is no perfecting “military expertise” except as Sun Tzu had it:

“Perfection in war is achieved when your enemy surrenders without fighting.”
Therefore the ultimate in “military expertise” is actually perfect diplomacy.

Certainly a great many inventions have contributed to “military expertise”: for example, rocketry, ballistics, and radio.
Each of these inventions have also given great benefits during peaceful times.

My point here is not to bang the drum for wartime innovations. While it’s true that historically wars have indeed led to great technological innovation, I don’t believe that wars are necessary for technology to advance; and in fact I think that conflicts in general tend to retard techology rather than promote it.

My main point is this: Technology empowers individuals at its best. Failing that, it empowers groups of individuals.
This is what technology does: It empowers somebody.

What that body does- what that person or group of people does- is no fault of the technology.

@john65pennington Which inventions can you name which fulfill your criterion? Which do the opposite?
I contend that a tool has no morality.

There are no dangerous weapons; only dangerous people.
You are a dangerous person yourself, and trained (unless I miss my guess) to use certain objects in deleterious ways if the situation demands it.
If you err in your judgment as to what the situation demands, who is called to account? Is it the tool, or is it the user?

Imagine an ape that climbs down from a tree and finds a sub machine gun.

In another one of the in college I studied answers one class was something called Popular Culture. I wish that I kept the text but of course I didn’t. In it we talked about myths that have become part of modern cultures. One of the things we talked about was the myth of technology as protector and savior. In it we talked about how modern man thinks that if we have a problem, technology will save us from ourselves. The key part of that is SAVING US. We always seem to have the feeling that it dosen’t matter what we do, we will bud something to solve the problem. With this we can abdicate any and all responsibility for problems we created. No. I think we can’t be trusted not to abuse technology. Utopia does not exist, we can’t always save us from ourselves.

Look around you. No.

There is a preponderance of people in the world that can be trusted with technological advancement, but a handful or even a single individual is all it takes to ruin everything.

I believe that humanity can be trusted with technology to the extent that it can be trusted to survive at all in the first place. As others have said, technology has no morality. Guns kill people,but they also got me quite a few dinners. Wild turkey is far better than the factory-farmed stuff! Cars give us yet another way to kill each other, yet they also have plenty of peaceful uses.

On the other hand, we can kill people with our bare hands, or take lives using nothing more advanced than a rock. Sure, technology allows us to kill more people faster, but that brings us to my main point; technology would not be a problem if not for the fact that a notable minority amongst us are fucking psychotic and could not be trusted even if technology did not exist.

It’s a Hobson’s choice. Look back to Attila the Hun, Alexander, The Vikings with their rape and pillage lifestyle. Can man be trusted without technology?