I think that the most disastrous thing that I know of right now that is happening as a consequence of our technology is the destruction of our ecosystem, actually. There are other scenarios that we can hypothesize about in the future, but this is one that we know is happening now and is a direct consequence of our technology.
It’s a consequence of our wealth. We wouldn’t have these kinds of impacts on our ecosystem if it weren’t for the massive increases in output of farming and the discovery of fertilization from hydrocarbons and so on and so forth. All of these things have allowed us to explode our population in ways that would have been impossible otherwise.
There are more people rising out of extreme poverty now than ever. Even though wealth inequality is an enormous problem and is growing, it’s also the case that extreme poverty is well on the road to being eradicated, which is an extraordinary achievement. There’s much less suffering in the world now than there ever has been before.
At the same time, we are living unsustainably. My big fear is that we fail to use our technology and our governance to manage our own environment in such a way that we achieve a sustainable state. I think there’s no question that this is the biggest failure mode that faces us over the next century.