[tribune]

I disagree with the author's conclusion that we have failed to reject the "myth of technological progress". The progress itself has not slowed - but people are certainly wary of it. We've kept the pin in the nuclear annihilation grenade for over 70 years, and have moved away from that doomsday in the last 30. Look at our science fiction: it's overwhelmingly filled with technology-fueled dystopias and post-apocalyptic worlds created by fictional but familiar human folly. We know what could happen if the world goes mad as it did in 1914, and it's not entirely accidental that this hasn't happened.

The recently-growing doubt about the ethics of Silicon Valley and the tech it produces is part of this overall techno-skeptic view. The pace of change brought on by the Internet is blistering, but in the latter half of this decade it's started receiving some well-deserved backlash. The lessons on the destructive potential for blind technological progress were hard fought, but they weren't for nothing. I see reason to be optimistic.