This blog post explores whether technological progress stems from humanity’s innate desires as an inevitability, or if it is a product of historical coincidence.
In Korea, a passenger car glides smoothly and swiftly toward its destination, catching the cool sea breeze of Jeju Island. The car’s audio system connects to an iPhone, playing music that complements the beautiful scenery, ensuring the roughly 30-minute journey never feels tedious. The music isn’t stored anywhere in the car; it streams into the vehicle from some unknown server. This was my experience during a trip to Jeju Island with friends this past June. Unless we consciously think about it, it’s hard to grasp how remarkable this experience truly is. It’s simply that these technologies have permeated our lives so quickly we barely notice. Cars and smartphones are prime examples of products at the cutting edge of modern technology. As time passes, cars become faster and more fuel-efficient. Leading companies in the US and Germany are even developing self-driving cars. Smartphones haven’t been around long, yet in just about five years, they’ve evolved dramatically. Every metric except size and weight—DPI, battery capacity, number of CPU cores—has more than doubled. While this technological advancement makes our lives more convenient, its rapid pace also raises concerns that humans might someday become dominated by technology. Is the technological development we’re witnessing now innovation, or fate? When the day comes that technology dominates humanity, will that era be our destiny, or an inevitable consequence we could have prevented?
Humanity has long revered great scientists and inventors. Among the great scientists are physicists like Newton and Einstein, while great inventors include figures such as James Watt, Edison, and Steve Jobs. We revere them because their theories enabled us to understand nature, and their inventions allowed us to live in this era of convenience. But would we truly be living in such a time without these scientists and inventors? Some might think that if Newton or Einstein hadn’t existed, someone else would have emerged to establish physical theories. Others might believe that even without Edison or Tesla, someone in later generations would have universalized electricity. Among the more ambitious, some might even think that if those individuals hadn’t existed, they themselves would have taken their place. People holding such views are likely closer to believing that technological progress is destiny.
Those who believe technological progress is inevitable will likely emphasize universal human traits. Ironically, modern technologies developed by a few innovative individuals or companies seem to embody this universality. Cars represent humanity’s desire for faster mobility, while smartphones reflect the universal human need to access and share information anywhere. Heating and cooling technologies like air conditioners and boilers satisfy the universal human desire to maintain a comfortable body temperature. Moreover, technologies commonly used around us naturally connect with universal human desires. From this perspective, the technological development humanity has achieved today appears almost like human destiny. In other words, modern technology was inevitably born from the convergence of our survival instincts, our desire for convenience, and our intellectual pursuits.
Yet this assertion somehow leaves us feeling uneasy. The technologies invented during the First Industrial Revolution became the catalyst for humanity to build a market economy and an equal society, and it was through painful wars that we achieved today’s highly advanced technological civilization. This process involved the research and sacrifice of countless individuals. Yet to attribute this to fate leaves us feeling hollow, as if it reduces humanity to passive beings. To shake off this emptiness, we must question whether the technology humanity has achieved truly arose from some immense force of destiny.
The butterfly effect describes how an initial, subtle difference can ultimately lead to significant change. This concept implies that a butterfly’s wing flapping in Seoul could become a storm in Beijing. I borrow this term to suggest that our modern technological era is not inevitable. Does humanity’s long journey—both past and future—truly have only one starting point and destination? Let us consider humanity as a single entity, and civilization as the life of that entity. Humans make countless choices and live under the influence of countless environments. The choices made there or the given environment determine which of the many forks in the road of life a person takes. I myself have not even lived half the average lifespan, but had I made slightly different choices, or had my growth environment been slightly different, I would have lived a completely different life. Had I chosen the liberal arts track in school, I might be writing poetry instead of essays now. Similarly, humanity likely underwent its development largely due to the birth of the numerous figures mentioned earlier and their environments.
Let’s examine a few examples that could support this argument. Steve Jobs could invent the iPhone because the great mathematician Alan Turing was born first, establishing the fundamental theories of computing, and because computer scientists like Dennis Ritchie, who developed the C language, existed. If their birth order had been reversed, we might still be texting friends on feature phones. Famous services like Facebook and Google are built on web technology. Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the web, was a scientist at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) when he first proposed the concept of hypertext in 1989 to facilitate information sharing among scientists. Hypertext evolved into the modern web and profoundly influenced the development of information and communication infrastructure and technology throughout its evolution. Had Tim Berners-Lee focused solely on his own research rather than information sharing, we might never have experienced massive internet services like Facebook and Google. Electric vehicles require no mechanical components to drive the engine, so both the front and rear of the vehicle can function as trunks. If, for some reason, electric vehicles had been developed before gasoline-powered cars, today’s automobiles would look very different from what we know.
While technological advancement carries the fateful element of human universality, it has developed—and will continue to develop—through the serendipitous interaction of historical currents and the emergence of exceptional individuals. In the very distant future, humanity may look back on our lives and dismiss cars or the internet as primitive inventions, akin to comb-pattern pottery or toothpicks. Future humans will satisfy universal human desires through technologies beyond our imagination. However, it is impossible for us to accurately predict their future technologies. This is because they, too, will advance technology through interactions of chance, just as we have experienced.
