Class Discussion Question 3

If I had to develop a statement that I could support from the reading, then I would have to say that our current relationship with technology is leading us more towards war than peace, or at least a dystopic society as opposed to the utopia we all strive for. In "Playing Chicken with the Apocalypse" Mark Sumner notes eneryg as being a form of technology that "defined how we live, where we live, and who we live with" and continues to define large chunks of our lives and that without this "cheap enery, starvation, disease, and war are the inevitable results for most of the world's population." Very strong statements based solely on an observation of the way that we employ technology.Even strong after continuing to read and discovering that Sumner also feels as strongly about the extinction of cheap energy sooner rather than later. "The Handmaid's Tale," "Ender's Game," and many of the other chapters in the text all leave us with the same conclusion: we are guiding ourselves into a state of chaos. Although Pastor Dan says that Burroughs believed "meaning could arise out of chaos." So while the literature supports the pessimistic view of technology being destructive, I will choose to remain cautiously optimistic and be more aware of my use of technology and hope that others develop a similar awareness and prove the literature wrong...