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Yes, their technology was harmful to their race as a whole, but it was their human nature combined with the aid of technology that ultimately killed most of life on Earth. I would also like to reiterate the fact that they used this technology as an extension of themselves. The end of life on Earth was dependent upon their technology and, without it, they would have merely used whatever nature gave them to fight with the leaders of the other countries. They would most likely have walked over and strangled each other… the way nature intended it (judging by what it gave us).
Our society has come so far technologically that we are beginning to fuse with our own created tools into what Haraway refers to as “cyborgs.” She says that, “Modern medicine is... full of cyborgs, of couplings between organism and machine (Haraway 150),” but in my opinion, it seems only natural. Our technology is being used, in this sense, to keep our biological bodies functioning. We are using our tools, our technology, as an aspect of ourselves. When we integrate our biological bodies with machines, we are both asserting our reliance on machines and also our complete mastery over them. We assume complete dominance over our machines and assimilate them into ourselves. It is in this way that technology no longer functions as extensions of ourselves, but rather as ourselves. It, in theory, becomes us. What then is the difference between our technology and ourselves? Is it that we created this technology that we are now a part of?
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I don’t think so. After all, it is biology that creates the simplest forms of technology. Evolution combined with morphology and instinct usually makes new technologies, but as humans we can bypass the entire step of evolution. We may continue on this path until we become simply the detached consciousness that Lyotard was looking for the whole time. However, we are still human and it is our nature to create technology for our own gain, just like it is any other biological system’s nature to use its own pre-existing evolutionary technology to its own gain. Technology doesn’t threaten us any more than we threaten ourselves… we are technology.
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You're Wrong.

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One of mankind's earliest technologies is the narrative. Narrative is defined as the telling of a story or event through any medium such as writing, speech, acting, etc... Dating this technology is difficult and problematic due to its intangibility, but we have at least some clues as to when it may have arisen. Cave paintings that date back as far as 35,000B.C. suggest that man has been telling stories (and creating narratives) for millennia (Cunliffe, 68)! Even if we could find the oldest possible cave painting we could never accurately determine when man created the first stories and narratives. Archaeologists and physical anthropologists have determined that man had the ability to speak (the proper hardware) sometime after 200,000 years ago (Campbell, 394). One would imagine it would not take very long for an already intelligent and technologically accomplished race to invent language and, along with it, stories… the first narratives. There is, of course, no way to know for certain, but what we can know is when written narrative started to appear in the archeological record. Aside from cave paintings, we see the first evidence for writing (which uses arbitrary characters, not pictures, to tell a story) in ancient Mesopotamia, around 3,500B.C. (Scarre and Fagan, 70). Back then, however, writing was reserved for the priest class and was used primarily as a means of tax-keeping. Narrative did not show up in writing until much later. Most stories were actually passed on orally through song until writing became somewhat accessible to the lower classes.
If you think narrative was created orally and independent of writing, go to page 23
Otherwise, go to page 13

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After that, written stories were still scarce until the advent of the printing press. This new technology of the 1400’s allowed text to be mass produced, making it accessible to almost everyone. After that, text remained pretty static until the typewriter, followed shortly by the computer. The computer revolutionized the way our society used narrative. It opened a Pandora’s Box of opportunities. More recently, complex word processors have allowed the author even greater freedom designing his/her narrative. This technology has allowed the narrative to come quite a long way since the days of ancient Greece and Mesopotamia. The modern narrative utilizes all of these technologies and more in order to tell the author’s story exactly as he/she envisioned it. A great example of the modern narrative is the book “House of Leaves”(HoL for short sometimes). Most people know it as a single production, but it is actually a culmination of two separate stories told using two distinct styles, which use even more forms of technology. This greater story is reminiscent of the Male-Female split in Lyotard's essay “Can Thought go on without a Body?,” except in this story, both sections exist independently of one another. There is a male and female side and both contribute to the overall story.
If you want to hear the Male side of the story, go to page 14
If you want to hear the Female side of the story, go to page 20

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The book House of Leaves is the Male counterpart to the greater House of Leaves story. It is told by using technology that has only recently become available. The use of computerized word processing is essential for the proper retelling of this novel. It utilizes multiple fonts, word colors (which could be easily located/manipulated by using the “find/replace” function), and paragraph structures which add further texture, depth, and meaning to the original text. Most importantly, the fonts are used as a distinction between which character is currently telling the story (i.e. different fonts for Johnny, Zampano, and the Editors). It allows for the separation of the many layers in the story, all of which are centered around a male. Women are rarely present and when they are, their only purpose seems to be serving their man. There are three layers to this story and each main character in each layer used women more like tools than human beings. For instance, Johnny used women as sex objects, Zampano used women as his eyes (because he was blind), and Navidson used his wife to take on all of his responsibilities at the drop of a hat while he was suddenly and without notice called to duty (as a photojournalist).
If you would like to hear about Johnny, go to page 15
If you would like to hear about Zampano, go to page 17
If you would like to hear about Navidson, go to page 18
If you would like to hear the Female side, go to page 20
If you would like to continue discussing themes in HoL, go to page 19

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Johnny Truant is on the outermost layer of this story. He was a tattoo artist who never quite made it to working on people, a drug abusing club-goer who used women as if they were just another drug to make him feel good, and, more importantly, a nobody who happened upon the tattered and damaged remains of an old mans manuscript. For as chauvinistic as he was, he was never quite as bad as his friend Lude (which, incidentally, is suspiciously similar to the word “lewd.” The author must have been running low on creativity when he named this character). The only thing that mattered to him was getting high and getting laid and he would often simply use his drugs just to get with women (who were usually so psychologically damaged that it was like taking candy from a baby). Until the manuscript engulfed his life, Johnny wasn't much different. It even got him into big trouble with Kyrie and her boyfriend Gdansk man. Women served only the purpose of informants and sex objects to him, so they rarely surfaced in his story. He would call them to meet up and talk about Zampano and his work, usually asking about one or more translations he needed, and somehow end up fucking every one of them. There are three possible interpretations of this. One being that this is how it actually happened. Two is that he used the manuscript as a means of getting into women's pants and just made up all the stuff about him going insane to make a better story. This interpretation is actually pretty likely, especially given Johnny's history as a wild story teller.
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