Based on your engagement with course texts and lectures, how do you assess technological development in the 20th and early 21st centuries?

British writer George Orwell, in 1984, warned of the possibility of a future in which technology would be used as an instrument of control and oppression. On the other hand, one cannot deny that invention and innovation have played major roles in enhancing quality of life throughout the time-frame examined this class, in the United States and beyond. Based on your engagement with course texts and lectures, how do you assess technological development in the 20th and early 21st centuries? Has technology in your view, served mostly as an engine that has expanded human freedom, or more so, as a force that has supported subjugation and oppression?