The razzle-dazzle of comforts, luxuries and hi-tech gadgets make it appear that technology has led to progress in human society. But has the quality of life of people in the modern technology-centered society improved?

1) In the past people would leave the doors of their homes open and still be fearless. Now moderns lock, bolt, chain and buzzer-alarm their doors and are still fearful. Is this progress?
2) Most moderns are proud of their posh houses, fast cars, smooth roads and skyscraper offices, but they can’t even sleep without a pill. Can a society be considered progressed if it makes its people struggle to get the simple and essential pleasure of sleeping, a pleasure that the “primitive” villager gets effortlessly?
3) The technological worldview being materialistic gives rise to selfishness, competition and exploitation. Most moderns, despite the show of romantic love, can’t trust their own spouses – what then to speak of parents and children or bosses and colleagues. Do alienated, suspicious people comprise a progressive society?
4) Mechanized factories can never offer as much employment as the farms did in the past. So a large number of people have to suffer or fear unemployment. For subsistence some of the unemployed turn to begging and others to crime. And overall the modernized industrial environment is so agitating to the mind that self-destructive addictions become the only solace for most people. Are unemployment, criminality and addictions indicators of progress?
5) Technology provides comforts, but the high-speed high-stress technology-centered lifestyle takes away the peace of mind necessary to enjoy the comforts. A software engineer has an AC in his office, but still he sweats – not due to heat, but due to tension. Thus technology makes us comfortably miserable.
6) Medical technology may have eradicated a few diseases and may offer cures to some more. But far more people need medical attention today than in the past due to unhealthy congested city living, sedentary lifestyles and polluted air, water and food. This is evident from the ever-increasing number of clinics, hospitals and medicine shops. Moreover many of the sophisticated medical treatments, unlike the traditional herbal cures, are prohibitively expensive.
Most moderns can hardly imagine life without television, movies and myriad other forms of hi-tech entertainment. And they pity their ancestors who did not have all this enjoyment. But people in the past knew how to find joy in the simple things of life – like sharing and caring in joint families, observing and learning from nature and hearing and chanting the names and glories of God. Consequently they did not find life boring. On the contrary it is we who have divorced ourselves from simple natural pleasures by our infatuation with technology. And so, despite our much-touted entertainment, we still find ourselves constantly bored. The entertainment industry may use sophisticated technology, but is the dependence on entertainment – and the serious inner emptiness that it symptomizes – a sign of progress?
Technology intoxicates us with the feeling of being the controller. Just by pressing a switch, we can cause huge machines to perform complex actions. Just by clicking a key, we can summon information from any part of the world. By constantly working with machines, we become habituated to controlling them and expect everything and everyone to be similarly controlled. When people refuse to be controlled like machines, we end up with all sorts of relationship conflicts ranging from domestic cold wars to marital ruptures, from quarrels to murders. And in life when things don’t go the way we want them to, we end up suffering from a wide range of mental problems, from depression to addiction, from stress to suicide.