Will technology be the death or the savior of the human race? Does its cultivation encourage the dichotomous gains in wealth that so few are enjoying at the expense of the many? Is it the expression of some factor in the human genome that effectively relates us more closely to viruses than to the great apes?

I have often struggled with the contradiction that lies within a probable future where we humans will be so successful at individual survival that we are likely to kill ourselves en masse by starving and polluting our planet. If the news seems finally to be taking note of the imbalance of wealth in America, will it become increasingly apparent that a similar imbalance grows between the rich and the poor nations of the world? Many apocalyptic future scenarios envision the two factors reinforcing one another with the relatively few rich living long, healthy lives that are fed off the labors of the many, plague-ridden masses. I do, indeed, fear that our ever-growing ability to extend and improve the lives of the few will come violently up against our inability to feed and care for the many.

Doug is a friend and one time co-worker who, years ago, stoked many a conversation over spaghetti and cheap red wine with his opinion that we ought not try to improve man's condition with such expensive and time consuming endeavors as researching a cure for cancer. He never seemed to be concerned with the possibility that that missing cure might one day save his own life. I always supposed this was because he was a young and robust man who assumed a sense of indestructibility that was inflated even beyond that of the rest of us at our young age. Though I lost touch with Doug long ago, I assume that he still enjoys an impression of temporary immortality similar to mine, but wonder if advancing age has moderated his opinion.

I knew Doug to be a really nice guy who displayed no personality characteristics that I might ever have compared to Hitler or Stalin. I never knew him to espouse racial cleansing, infanticide, or elitism of any sort. Though he exhibited all the hallmarks of intelligence and caring that made me value his friendship, he had what I can only characterize as a quaint simplicity to his outlook. It makes me smile to think back on the example that he never referred to a rubber spatula by that term. To Doug that common kitchen implement was a "peanut butter jar scraper", a perfectly descriptive term for the device that equipped him to take advantage of every last smidgeon of that goopy resource that was so precious to him as an impoverished bachelor.

Whether Doug chose not to or just failed to see that his opinion could turn against him poses a critical question in the fate of the human race. I believe that we do have the potential within us to eliminate cancer, indeed to extend life to years that were once unimaginable. That I do not believe that our planet has the ability to sustain such success, certainly not for all of us, means we do have to grapple with the result.

My understanding does not extend any further into the relationship between technology and sociology than my own humble thought processes take me. I am, by training, an engineer, so you would expect me to tend toward technological solutions to particular everyday problems. On the other hand, I think I have always related to the world at large in more of a thoughtful, even artistic way. As I look back on my thirty-five year career, I now know that I became a naval architect because it offered a profession where technology strove for a happy marriage between the rigid, mechanical world of a ship's machinery and structure and the immense, but fluid forces of the sea. As a stereotypical Libra, this suits my personality. It satisfies my need to balance the world around me.

So, I ask whether we humans have either the will or even the ability to moderate our success in a moral way? Is it possible for us to share our scientific and medical advances in ways that improve the lives of every human on Earth, not just a rich, elite class while imbuing everyone with self-control that keeps us from over-running the place? We would have to overcome both our own propensity to take advantage of those advances and our fear that others would take advantage of us if we didn't. Ultimately, I think that is the question that faces the human race. We enjoy the innate skill to devise ways to survive, but also suffer from the innate inability to curb the individual survival instinct for the benefit of the race. I believe we must all simultaneously choose to overcome that inability or face up to a future of growing inequality and the eventual anarchy and strife that will result.