I know this has been said before, but I just wanted to share my perspective on things.
An absolute viewpoint on whether technology has a "negative" or "positive" impact on us in terms of a singular perspective is always going to be false. Technology can be both beneficial and detrimental. It's an impartial variable, it's the application of technology that shades which way it leans. Luddites who feel that technology is bad should stand on their laurels, smash their computers, strip their clothes and start foraging. But I take it they won't do that, because intuitively they understand the benefits of technology. If you want to talk about the evolution of the human species by stating that cavemen were stronger than modern man, is missing the point of our evolution. We've evolved to point were "brute" strength is not as useful to our intellect. Though people argue that our technology dumbs us down, such as losing math skills by using a calculator, a commonly cited example. But while true, that misses the point. Being able to use calculators has allowed us to make computations that are impossible for the human mind to do and thus allow for us more efficient progress. Technology is a bane and a boon. It's all a matter of how it's wielded. When it comes to how food is produced I will agree that the monoculture of many crops is unsustainable (well unless we evolve into a species that survives on a high fructose carb loaded diet, which if we keep up this path is bound to happen). Obviously I can't list the myriad examples of the impact of all different types of technologies the subject is too vast and too complicated when speaking in broad terms.
The gist if you want to look at evolution from a solely genetic perspective, as is done in biology then you can talk about the newer human evolutions, such as HIV infected prostitutes in Africa having been infected for 20 plus years never developing AIDs based on their particular genetic makeup, or people in the US developing a gene that is responsible for vasculature responding and healing more rapidly in people with very poor diets. Remember evolution is a slow process.
On a macro scale technology and humanity are intertwined. And both coevolve in a strangwme symbiosis between the organic (humans), and inorganic. It's human nature to develop technology, that much should be obvious. What people really are afraid of is losing their humanity. But why? If evolution is to be believed, and scientific reasoning seems to think that it's the truth given what we know about biology, then we should not fear losing our humanity. As long as we are still humans we will always have human nature. We lost our bacteria nature, our fish, amphibian, lizard and primate nature (okay so "lose" is a strong word, we evolved past it, such as how you can see the evolution of our brains like a totem pole back to our earlier forms). We will evolve past our human nature too. This form is only transient, and who wants to be a dumb ape man forever anyway. The theory is that we will integrate with technology in a technological singularity (if we don't kill ourselves before we get there). Though even if we kill ourselves some extremeophile will continue to evolve and rise from the ashes. If we don't get off this planet and figure out a way to survive in space we go extinct when the sun dies. To go the ativistuc route back to a more "primitive" form of man will lose this ultimate goal. Sure technology makes us physically weaker. Ever since we developed glasses we allowed people with poor vision to survive, and spread the genes for poor vision. Same is true for asthmatics and other types of conditions, but so what. What's the solution? Eugenics? Population control? I think not, let nature weed us out, while we just continue to hammer on with the goal of expanding what we know of the universe and try to survive and hopefully in the future iur invalid genetically altered android offspring will spread across the cosmos, or well reach enlightenment or whatever.
Of course Maybe I've got it all wrong. Maybe evolution is wrong. It all could be. Because the human mind can only grasp so much. When we evolve toca point where we can understand everything then we will be enlightened. Until then Inthink we should work on making the world a safer happier loving place, because in the end were still all going to die. And you know what, I'm cool with that.
Peace.
