Are you serious? Technology makes my life incomparably better. Let's just set a baseline that both of my children, 13 and 18, are alive due to medicine that didn't even exist a hundred years ago. But that's boring.
I'm a translation freelancer whose customers are located in various places around the world; I get my work by email every day, process it using a translation memory that permits me to look up previous translations instantaneously and with the Internet available for instantaneous glossary searches (I no longer even own a paper dictionary - it takes too long to consult it), then send the work back, invoice by email, and receive money into my bank account in Indiana which I access from ATMs here in Budapest. I do all that right from my home, so I can work four hours a day and walk the dog whenever the weather is good, help my kids with their homework when they need it, and in general enjoy my time.
Although I live in Budapest this year (and Puerto Rico for five years, Indiana for three), I talked to my father in Indiana face to face yesterday - I had to cut it off because we were going shopping, but that's fine because I can talk to him any time I want. The week before that I was able to talk to my mom, who just had a hip replacement; fifty years ago she'd simply be an invalid due to inflammatory disease, but with metal joints she's still active and able to walk.
All that against the backdrop of the fact that I grew up in the middle of nowhere on a farm in Indiana. My life then was already incredibly blessed by technology - my grandparents lived twenty miles away, but we still saw them on a weekly basis, which wouldn't have been possible fifty years before that. I was able to go to school because agricultural productivity permitted me that free time.
So yes. Technology has made my life better. It boggles the mind to imagine that people can believe it doesn't.
All good examples. But somebody made the observation that the most significant technology innovation to ever hit agriculture was the rubber boot. It let academics visit/study farms without getting dirty, starting the whole discipline on a road to modernization.
I'm a translation freelancer whose customers are located in various places around the world; I get my work by email every day, process it using a translation memory that permits me to look up previous translations instantaneously and with the Internet available for instantaneous glossary searches (I no longer even own a paper dictionary - it takes too long to consult it), then send the work back, invoice by email, and receive money into my bank account in Indiana which I access from ATMs here in Budapest. I do all that right from my home, so I can work four hours a day and walk the dog whenever the weather is good, help my kids with their homework when they need it, and in general enjoy my time.
Although I live in Budapest this year (and Puerto Rico for five years, Indiana for three), I talked to my father in Indiana face to face yesterday - I had to cut it off because we were going shopping, but that's fine because I can talk to him any time I want. The week before that I was able to talk to my mom, who just had a hip replacement; fifty years ago she'd simply be an invalid due to inflammatory disease, but with metal joints she's still active and able to walk.
All that against the backdrop of the fact that I grew up in the middle of nowhere on a farm in Indiana. My life then was already incredibly blessed by technology - my grandparents lived twenty miles away, but we still saw them on a weekly basis, which wouldn't have been possible fifty years before that. I was able to go to school because agricultural productivity permitted me that free time.
So yes. Technology has made my life better. It boggles the mind to imagine that people can believe it doesn't.