Viewpoint 1 - What is the purpose of technology?

Hi all,

Before we even need to begin on whether technology is right, let us take a very brief look at technology, or more specifically, the development of technology from the Industrial Revolution. Upon the Revolution, the prototypes of many common appliances we saw today appeared. The first modern automobile by Karl Benz could officially chug along on the street in 1885. The first radio system started blaring out announcements in 1897. The list goes on and on.

An interesting thing to note is that at this particular period of time, what is known as Liberalism, or in other words, the main idea behind "Nothing But The Truth", that everyone is entitled to rights, has expanded to a great extent. In fact, this can be most clearly seen from the Emancipation Proclaimation (ie All slaves should be freed) and the sudden desire for equality in race, gender and age.

This leads me to make a sort of interesting suggestion: Was it because of the lost of such servants that technology was developed? By the equalisation of man around the world, it implied that everyone had the right to be free and respected equally. In other words, all servants that people once had would be lost. Man, in a sense, would now have no one else to, in a way, do his dirty work. So what did he do? He put the responsibility on somethng else which were not protected by rights, by something which he could create freely - machinery. Thus we see that instead of black slaves carrying Western masters on a trishaw, you now have these Western masters driving a car themselves.

In fact, technology as a replacement for slave labour now is even more clear, albeit more negatively. Those who were thrilled by the power of electricity, technology and machinery realised soon that the very fundamental weakness was that it broke down very often and was also very cold to them. Thus, we see that maids are now becoming common, for they rarely, in fact, nearly never report sick and they can keep people company.

In conclusion, technology could have been a substitute for slave labour. Your opinion?

Cheers,

Darrel