Nuclear bombs can destroy us. Facebook undermines our privacy. Artificial intelligence (AI) and robots can enslave us (or, worse…

Nuclear bombs can destroy us. Facebook undermines our privacy. Artificial intelligence (AI) and robots can enslave us (or, worse, take our jobs). Synthetic biology and geneediting have humans playing God. Social media make us depressed: we’ve never been so connected yet never so alone.

Those are just a few of the complaints leveled against technology. For most of human history, however, technology was mostly seen as a force for good. More people would live because of technical progress, from refrigeration to vaccination, than perish because of it, despite lethal inventions such as gunpowder.