Have we the knowledge, willpower, and determination to survive? -- Technology and survival: are they compatible? -- Natural disasters and civilization -- Good technologies with bad side effects -- From trains to transistors -- Food, survival, and resources -- The 'Silent Spring' revisited -- Medicine: expectations and reality -- Knowledge loss from changing language -- Decay of materials and information loss from technology -- Technology, the new frontier for crime and terror -- Technology-driven social isolation -- Consumerism and obsolescence -- Rejection of knowledge and information -- Hindsight, foresight, radical suggestions, and a grain of hope. |