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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> > Technology is our only hope for keeping things running in this modern
> >  world of billions and billions of people. If the technology doesn't
> >  come thru we are all in a big hurt.
> 

The topic was finely treated in this thread, and I didn't have time to 
contribute at the time, but I thought these observations fit:

1)  The hope in technology epitomized by "After all, we put a man on the 
moon" has one glaring flaw.  We put a man on the moon because we had 
unlimited 
access to fossil fuels.  If we did not have oil and NG, could we put a man on 
the 
moon?   Maybe, but it would take depriving the environment and its people of 
a great deal to do it. 

Put more simply, could we make, say, a plastic keyboard without fossil oil?   
Yes, you could grow oil crops and use wind or tidal or solar energy to refine 
and process it into plastic.  But the effort and amount of resources it would 
take would make the keyboard very expensive in terms of human endeavor.

Fossil fuels are a one time deal in human history.  We have NOTHING that 
approximates what we get from them.  Our technological ability WITHOUT oil  
comes 
to very, very little.  Our faith in same is misplaced.


2)  Has technology made us any happier?  Instead of taking some joy in what 
technology brings us, it appears to me that instead there is only the 
creeping 
fear of being without it.  Yet we often mistake that unrealized (as yet) fear 
for happiness.