I believe the common prevailing metaphor—the internet as cloud—is problematic. The internet is not one all-encompassing, mysterious, and untouchable thing. (In early patent drawings depicting the internet, it appears as related shapes: a blob, brain, or explosion.) These metaphors obfuscate the reality that the internet is made up of individual... See more
Even collecting 1% of the sun's energy is an unbelievable change in our species' energy budget. We could create the infrastructure to beam basically unlimited amounts of energy around the solar system for all sorts of projects — colonies on other worlds, terraforming planets, constructing more mega structures, or even traveling to other stars. It... See more
There's a book by Christopher Booker, he claims there are really just seven types of stories. There's monster, rags to riches, quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy, rebirth. You don't have to agree with that list exactly, but the point is this: if you think in terms of stories, you're telling yourself the same things over and over again.
Indeed, philosophers of technology have argued that technology is the essential human activity. Ernst Kapp said that human existence is always and everywhere bound up in a relationship to tools.