Technological Advances: Logical Indeed?

On the subject of advancing technology, my views run far more parallel to Joy than Kurzweil. Although Joy's specific fears and mine are not the same, I am fairly pessimistic in in my opinions on this subject. I am less concerned, however, with the impeding takeover of computers, and more with how integrated computers will warp our perceptions of the surrounding world. People are already terrifyingly unmoved by the beauty and power of nature compared to how we generally feel about the world within the computer. I wouldn't exactly call myself a hippie, but I definitely do not think I could deal with a world in which, as Martin Heidegger feared, we see nature as only a means to an end, see everything according to what we can do with it or make out of it.

Besides that, I think that there are places where technological advances are entirely beneficial. Medicinally, newer ideas such as nanotechnology bring some amazing possibilities into light, such as the idea that we can program a computer so small that it is able to be injected into a person's bloodstream and act in accordance to whichever disease it faces. This, also, brings an entire series of philosophical questions with it. What will happen if such technology is so effective that disease -- and subsequently, death -- are considered obsolete and no longer inevitable? I have to admit, upon imagining a world in which children grow up personally knowing the 16 generations that preceded them, in which people live to ages currently believed unimaginable, dying seems like a very appealing end to life.

Ultimately, I believe, my technological cynicism stems from the fact that upon the invention of technologies from the past (the telephone, etc.), the motivation came from a person having a great idea. Now, it seems that motivation has shifted to large companies competing for more money. And now, the inventions are not necessarily connecting people to each other and societies to each other. Rather, we are becoming more isolated creatures, satisfied without human interaction. There is a saying which states that your experience, no force can take from you. So I must ask: are the things you do in virtual reality going to take the place of real-life experiences?