What Technology Cannot Accomplish

The modern world teems with technological innovations that have transformed human life on every level.  Health, entertainment, communication, transportation, business, and education have all been affected by these advancements, and technological progress shows no signs of abating.  As a result of these changes, however, some seem to mistakenly regard technology as the present or future solution to every human problem--an impossible thing.

For all of its merits, technology remains forever incapable of resolving the most significant issues a human could encounter.  Human limitations of an epistemic nature, for instance, do not vanish with the introduction of new technologies.  In fact, nothing about innovation can abolish such constraints.

While technology can somewhat alleviate the difficulties of living with human epistemological or metaphysical limitations, it cannot erase them entirely.  The most sophisticated technology can at best only alter the way that we experience those limitations; even a thoroughly modified transhumanist is still restricted into certain epistemological and metaphysical categories.  For example, no technology allows someone to prove that their memories correspond to past events or that their senses perceive the external world as it is.

Epistemological/metaphysical restrictions are not the only things technology cannot remove, of course.  Moral problems cannot be resolved by the mere presence or evolution of technology.  Technology itself is entirely amoral, but it can be wielded in unjust or oppressive ways.  The basic fact that scientific innovation is not automatically accompanied by moral correctness means that technology alone does nothing to answer questions of a moral nature.  What, then, is technology useful for, if not for rectifying issues of epistemology or ethics?

Convenience and simplification are the ultimate benefits of technology, as each of its triumphs reduces down to one of these two things.  This does not mean that technology is insignificant, only that one must look beyond it for the solutions to the deepest issues facing humankind.  It is pointless to act as if something can give what it cannot.  To look to technology for deliverance from metaphysical, epistemological, and moral problems, therefore, is utter folly.