So tell the average person you want to get rid of cars, and their first response, an entirely reasonable response, will be, why, that it's absurd. I need a car to get to drive every morning to my job in the city from my home in the suburbs, without a car, how would I be able to keep such a job? and so on. This is true, without his automobile it seems unlikely anybody is keeping his forty minute commute into the city; yet I say still it is not the end of the idea. Without cars, nobody would expect one to hold a job in a different city to one's residence; that would indeed be absurd. Without cars clearly one would be expected to hold a job within walking or biking - or if you're rich, horsing - distance from one's home because that would all that could be expected. You see this logic surrounding technological developments of all sorts, the technique creates problems that it then solves; it's circular.
We can even right now invent a technology, yes, let's say - flying cars, a perennial favourite of futurists. So suppose it's 2050 and we move to get rid of flying cars. Why, it doesn't matter: perhaps they are bad for the environment; they keep hitting birds. All that jet fuel and uranium isn't good for the skies; it doesn't matter. So we bring this to the average man and he complains how he is supposed to make his commute from Saltcoats to Istanbul every morning without his supersonic flying car. He is again, entirely correct: without his supersonic flying car he cannot do this any more than one of us could today and this much is obvious. But again I say, why must he? Any of us can see a world is possible without daily transeuropean flights, and we see it because we are living it.
I can forsee an objection to this, although because people are generally not economically literate I do not expect to encounter it often but in the interests of honesty I will pre-empt it anyway. Now we suppose that the introduction of this flying car adds a degree of freedom to the market that allows for greater efficiency or efficacy. The man travelling from Saltcoats to Instabul is performing work closer to some market equilibrium since he can find employment to suit his skills and output outisde a narrow range around his home. Thus the logic is not totally circular because the technological advancement actually lends to something besides itself because it leads to further economic development. But have we not just committed to the same error? For what do we want this developed economy? To produce internal combustion engines and smartphones? To produce uranium and jet fuel, perhaps, yes. So we find that this is yet another instance of circular reasoning employed by technique to mollify us.
On this line of thought though, there is another objection. Economic development is useful because we need it to produce antibiotics and medical equiptment: things that improve the quality of life for the ill or extend it for the elderly. This is true. It does remain to me to point out that we would not need even half of these medical inventions if people would put more effort into taking care of themselves, and indeed if certain technological advancements were rebuked many modern ailments would dissapear: AIDS was only enabled to cross the species barrier to humans by modern technology, no matter which origin theory you subscribe to; drug addictions cannot ensare addicts if addictive drugs cannot be mass produced; a recent pandemic swept the globe in a matter of weeks thanks to fast air travel; and do I even need to explain the place of obesity? The mere fact that a person's lifespan can be extended far beyond it's natural conclusion itself has generated a plethora of newly mass diseases. All this being said, it is true that if we admit the inability of people to truly improve themselves and take their lives into their own hands, we need this level of civilisation. In conclusion, technophilia is a tacit but complete admission of failure in the face of the human condition.