[Wineandbread]

Actually, I recently read "Empire Falls" by Niall Ferguson recently for my World History class. It placed a pretty large emphasis on cultural degradation of Western civilization as evidence of the decline of the West. But I don't agree with a lot of what he says.

I agree largely with what Reach has to say. Technological advances seems to scale with the need for intelligent people to operate and further development for new technology. Sure, it also simplifies daily life and makes us use less effort to accomplish otherwise difficult or tedious tasks, but I don't see how that could be ruled cultural degradation.

We're still trying to put moon bases and cure cancer too. It's just a slow process. There's a lot of inventions that happen by accident, and perhaps that accident just hasn't occurred yet.