what is the meaning of It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

Answer 1

Technology is the ability to do something, the knowledge and capability of engaging in a behavior and producing an outcome. It can be simple (knowing how to smasch nut shells open with a rock) or complex (calling home on your cell phone). It can also be industrial (like learning how to turn urine into a key ingredient in gunpowder) or cultural - for example, the doctrine of free speech enshrined in Western governments is a technology because it permits the conduct of a certain kind of society.

Your guess is as good as mine when answering the question "What is humanity?" But for the sake of your question, let's take it to mean broadly a concern for others.

Applying the terms together, the person you're quoting is saying that our culture has somehow managed to find ways to do things that are beyond the control of our concern for others. Taken at face value like that, the statement is meaningless. People have likely always found ways to use whatever abilities they have to act in ways that do not take a concern for others into account. A caveman whacking another caveman over the head with a club is using technology in a way that doesn't demonstrate his humanity, so in that sense people flying planes into buildings or dropping atomic bombs on civilian population centers aren't doing anything new.

But I don't think that's what the statement is trying to convey. Throughout human history, we have presumably always been confronted with situations in which we were compelled by our humanity to want to help others but couldn't because we lacked the technology.

Medicine is a great example. Generally speaking, a person with a health issue wants to be helped, so our humanity drives us to want to help that person. History has recorded a vast array of technologies for dealing with a medical problem like, say, a severe injury. Most of them weren't terribly effective - some were downright harmful - but the desired outcome was to return a person to health. And in most cases, a person too injured to return to some degree of health and quality of life just died regardless of treatment. But today, we can and often do wind up keeping people alive only so that they can exist in conditions we wouldn't wish on anyone - comatose, mentally destroyed, physically decrepite. Some of those cases could be examples of a technology designed to allow us to act humanely being put to use in ways that now do more harm than good.

Other potential examples are technologies that allow us to make choices that some find inhumane, ranging from the small-scale (abortion-on-demand is a good example) to the large scale (like the "Green Revolution" in India which sought to wipe out hunger by improving farming technology, only to see the country's population balloon and wind up with as many or more starving people).

The thrust of the statement is worth keeping in mind - that just because we gain the ability to do something we could not do before does not mean that doing it makes the world a better place.

Answer 2

Hyperbole.

Answer 3

what it means is that the sociologist who said it is anti-technology.

Answer 4

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=ArXcJW03w2WQ5wCylOkC_fbsy6IX?qid=20070406134313AAxBi6o

Answer 5

We know how to kill everyone but don't know how not to.