I’d point out that I wasn’t passing judgement on selfishness, just stating it as a fact. Self-interest is a less-charged way of saying it I suppose!

I believe the argument in favour of socialism is that you don’t NEED various things to survive, while OTHERS might needs things (like shelter) to survive.

Damn it all for being way too complex to actually work with in your head though… damn it all.

Prudence sounds good, Nico. We move too quickly, I guess. Discussion of technology is nearly always in retrospect. It’s basically running unchecked.

I’m amazed we’re still here to talk about it, really

Okay, let me clarify a little after looking up “selfish” in the dictionary. I was ignoring the part about caring ONLY about yourself. I guess I really meant self-interest. You ought to be interested in your own survival, right? Otherwise, well…. you wouldn’t survive!

I always vouch for prudence with technology since I’m such a fan, as in an “have we learned nothing from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein?” kind of way. That is, as you state in the beginning, technology is neither a good or bad thing. It’s just an idea. And only with careful consideration can we prevent it from turning on us and murdering everyone we know.

In short: more cautionary tales, plz!

Of course you’d say that, Melissa, you’ve read Atlas Shrugged

You touch on something I was thinking of today and yesterday: that if it isn’t you, it’s someone else. You can’t stop progress, and if you don’t make something, and make it first, someone else will take that upper hand. I was thinking along different lines, but on the same premise. (If “we” hadn’t come to America, if it had remained an untouched nation, some other colonials would have come around to wipe out the indigenous peoples.) I wonder about the inevitability of it. If we could freeze time, if we could halt human ingenuity, would it be a good thing?