The paradox of technological progress

Humanity has, over the years, advanced not the tangible, but the intangible — digital realms, political ideologies, finance, and services — while neglecting the progress of real, material economies such as medicine, manufacturing, and urban development. JavaScript evolves by the day, yet we still ride automobiles invented over two centuries ago, deluding ourselves into believing civilization has progressed. In truth, these changes hold little real substance in this world. Nothing fundamental has truly changed.

The critique that the digital economy–centered development seen in modern society has failed to fundamentally improve material life in the real world has long been raised. Scholars of the history of technology and economic development, such as American economist Robert Solow and British historian David Edgerton, have articulated what is known as the “productivity paradox,” noting that despite dazzling advances in information technology, the impact on actual productivity and substantial improvements in daily life has fallen far short of expectations. This situation remains largely unchanged even in the era dubbed the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where profit generation tends to favor data analytics and software services over the enhancement of physical productivity in the material world. While smart factories and fully automated production lines are visibly present, statistical indicators reveal that they have not led to the kind of revolutionary increase in goods or fundamental transformation of living conditions that humanity anticipates on a macro scale. The stagnation of space development since the moon landing, and the failure of breakthroughs in genome sequencing and biotechnology to yield definitive cures for incurable diseases, can also be understood in this context.

People tend to avoid producing tangible goods in the real world because it is laborious, risky, yields low margins relative to investment, and carries high uncertainty. As a result, they develop the economy and financial industries within the digital realm, deriving vicarious satisfaction from it. If the technology of human civilization had taken a genuinely existential direction, the Fourth Industrial Revolution should have involved computer technology being directed toward the physical world—building smart factories, constructing advanced cities like NEOM, or solving previously intractable problems like the Riemann Hypothesis. Instead, the actual course of the Fourth Industrial Revolution moves in the opposite direction, attempting to resolve real-world issues within the digital world. Ironically, it even brings spiritual and ideological conflicts—such as gender issues, human rights, and political ideologies—into the material world, thus generating new societal problems. This constitutes a profoundly religious and non-material mode of thinking.

Consequently, it is paradoxical that since the advent of the First Industrial Revolution and the (semi-)automated Fordist factory system, there has been little to no meaningful increase in the production of tangible goods. Most industries continue to operate through traditional means. When excluding the virtual domain of the internet and measuring productivity strictly within the real world, there is little indication of significant growth. Even Palantir, a company hailed for driving digital productivity, operates within the highly abstract realm of data-driven decision-making. This does not translate into the mass proliferation of goods, fully automated production lines, or truly “smart” factories. The conveyor belt remains effective, and no invention has yet emerged to fully replace it. Nearly all new inventions today are digital ideas or pieces of information, and these are not directed toward humanity but consumed recursively to generate more information.

So, human healthy life expectancy and average lifespan no longer show clear upward trends. The completion of the Human Genome Project has not led to cures for incurable diseases. Nearly seventy years have passed since humanity reached the Moon, and yet there are still no human settlements there. We have not transformed deserts into green land or expanded arable territory to increase food production and lower the cost of essential goods. We have not resolved environmental pollution to make Earth more livable; instead, we consume ever more energy to maintain non-existent digital worlds, thereby making the Earth an even less hospitable place for human life. This is the history of human civilization’s development over the past century. Humanity remains mortal, with no sign of escaping this condition.

Ironically, when it comes to truly existentially significant endeavors—genetic engineering, full automation, the creation of artificial humans or robots to address declining birthrates, or expansion into space—people react with extreme aversion. Instead, they prefer to focus on issues that exist solely in the human mind: human rights, gender conflicts, hate speech, and political ideology. In other words, humanity has ceased to tend to the fields and now concentrates entirely on the rituals for summoning rain, believing that the progress of civilization depends on how well such rituals are performed, while leaving the actual work of cultivation untouched.

As a result, instead of large-scale technological innovations that bring direct changes to the physical world, the reproduction and distribution of information via the web, internet, and mobile platforms have come to dominate the market. This has shifted societal focus and resources away from traditional notions of “civilizational advancement” and toward the evolution of culture, ideology, and discourse. Recently emergent ideological progressivism likewise diverges from the bold material pioneering spirit once emphasized by industrial revolutionaries, often adopting a skeptical stance toward existential and physical challenges such as space exploration, human augmentation, or large-scale environmental engineering. In this light, “progress” no longer implies the outward expansion of civilization or the conquest of the unknown through technological development, but rather stresses emotional and moral evolution — a theme noted across numerous sociological and political studies. Thinkers such as American intellectual Christopher Lasch and German sociologist Ulrich Beck have analyzed how modern “risk societies” increasingly fear the unintended consequences and catastrophes posed by technological innovation, thereby placing renewed value systems and ethical norms above the advancement of technology itself.

A deeply paradoxical and critical reality is that those who self-identify as “progressives” are often profoundly skeptical of land reclamation, urban development, ergonomics, or the productivity gains enabled by fully automated AI. For them, “progress” is not associated with technological advancement or the pioneering of civilization, but is instead judged by the extent to which one is politically enlightened compared to past generations. Those who operate under the banner of “progress”—especially ideological progressives who place social justice, inclusivity, diversity, and rights discourse at the center—understand progress not as the expansion of civilization’s frontiers but as a process of reshaping inner human attitudes, reevaluating historical wrongs, and correcting ethical frameworks.

From the standpoint of ideological progressivism, this trend becomes even more pronounced, as technological developments that might endanger human dignity or naturalness — such as artificial wombs, gene editing, and comprehensive automation — are increasingly viewed as threats to be guarded against. As a result, a value system that prioritizes inner, ethical progress over the conquest of the physical limitations of the real world has become dominant, leading to criticisms that modern civilization is stagnating and losing its dynamism. Ultimately, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has favored the rise of digital services, social networking systems, and platform economies over breakthroughs in manufacturing, agriculture, or infrastructure. Consequently, actual production of goods and the resolution of large-scale material problems have received comparatively less attention. Furthermore, the belief that technological “progress” benefits all of humanity has eroded, weakening large-scale investment and policy support for industrial automation and space development.

In this view, progress becomes a matter of moral evolution rather than civilizational pioneering; technology is not a tool for transforming the material world, but rather a lever for recalibrating human sensibilities. This is analogous to the development of Confucian thought in East Asia, which promoted universal education not in the sense of scientific, mathematical, or technological advancement, but in terms of instilling humanistic values such as virtue, filial piety, ritual propriety, loyalty, sincerity, and benevolence. However, because humanism lacks clear and universally applicable answers, the notion of universalization through formal education becomes inherently contradictory. In fact, efforts to impose such uncertain value systems through standardized ideological instruction and reeducation evoke authoritarian models of thought control, akin to the ideological rigidity seen in Marxist-Leninist regimes or fascist systems—one is reminded of China’s public security apparatus.

Because of, the concept of progress has historically drifted from its essential meaning. It is no longer about technological innovation that opens new worlds, nor about expanding human capacity to conquer the unknown. Instead, progress is now evaluated based on how morally “woke” one is, how sensitive one is to the pain of others, and how decisively one can break from the past. This standard is highly emotional and rooted in perception rather than action, which renders transformative technologies suspect. Attempts to liberate labor through automation, enhance decision-making through AI, or edit the human genome are often met with visceral opposition on the grounds that they may infringe upon human “naturalness” or “dignity.” This line of thinking frequently functions as a form of neo-religiosity, idealizing and essentializing the human condition. Consequently, the rise of the current notion of progress, when viewed on the scale of civilizational metrics, signifies a stagnation of human advancement.

There will be no more interesting and gloomy fact than that those who advocate progress prefer the establishment of trade unions to fully automated AI.