Was there life before technology?

How did we ever manage without fire? I don't think I could go back to hunting with an Atalatal, after getting my first bow and arrows. Pity those who are still using stone tools, and haven't yet discovered how useful bronze can be. The horse has revolutionized communications. The chariots used by those raidere are hard to beat, but they are an illiterate bunch and incapable of organizing large armies. Rome is the largest concentration of people on the planet, and mostly that is due to fine roads and acquaducts. The arch makes every other archetectural style obsolete, and concrete now makes previously impossible buildings practical. Using the crossbow is immoral and unfair, where can I get a few for my own army. The printing press will destroy the beauty of hand crafted books, and soon even the peasants will be reading. Gunpowder will never replace sword and shield, or be a substitute for real Chivalry. The use of steam to power factories, railroads and ships will make sailing a dead art. We can build larger iron ships with such lethal guns that it is a wonder any traditional frigates remain afloat. Fly? Why the next thing you know someone will carry a revolver aloft and war will be much more terrible. The habits of young people to ride around, unescorted, in automobiles spells the end of morality and marriage. Aircraft faster than the speed of sound? Ridiculous. Music and pictures transmitted around the world without telegraph wires, Hmph!

Technology is intregal to the human drama, it is part of what we are. Each generation must find it difficult to imagine a world where the level and sophistication of technology was less. Don't hold your breath, but you ain't seen nothin yet kids.

I'm with Asherman on this. It's amazing how life can be found through it's evolution, including the supposedly 'new' technology.

Thanks for your comments guys!

I hear what your saying and technology plays a huge part in our lives. Do think that technology has any limitations?

Yes, every bit of technology has limitations, and negative (often unseen) implications. For instance, war is never made obsolete by a technological innovation, but the way war is waged may change in surprising ways. Nobel thought that the invention of TNT would make war so terrible that it would be abandoned, instead it was coupled with another invention, the airplane (also widely predicted to end war), and war became even more devastating.

The thing is technology isn't static, it is in continual evolution. An invention changes the world in both positive and negative ways and new inventions are born. Some enhance and improve upon what went before, and others try to solve the problems that sprang from earlier technology. Sometimes technology becomes more complex and even mysterious. Other times it may be so simple that in retrospect we can hardly believe that no one had made that "invention" earlier.

Often we are like fish unaware of the sea in which we swim. How many of us have more than a glimmer of an idea of how a television works, or all the things that go together to make a light go on when we flip a wall switch. I'm afraid that many moderns might starve to death in the midst of plenty if they were suddenly and unexpectedly stripped of their technological support systems, but that was your original point, wasn't it.

A perhaps more interesting question is has intelligent life ever existed without technology?