They don't make ‘em like they used to. Technology is in decline. I'm not just speaking of planned obsolescence and increasingly shoddy construction, but of a general trend of regression in large areas of technology.

In the '60s we were sending people to the moon, in the '70s we had supersonic passenger planes, in the '80s we had styrofoam cups that didn't burn our fingers, and in the '90s we could ride electric buses on the TTC. And today? There are no more rockets to the moon, no Concordes left to fly us to Europe in three-and-a-half hour, we're back to using paper cups that burn our fingers and the TTC is very proud of its 800 new, loud, diesel-spewing buses.

Oh, and now we have fast computers that crash a lot and spam us with ads. That's new.

Wars are not like they used to be, thanks to the pinpoint accuracy of modern weaponry. For example, in World War I, nine soldiers were killed for every civilian death. Now, with modern technology, 10 civilians are killed for every dead soldier. Does anyone see something wrong here? Is it possible that our advanced technology isn't really advancing in the right direction? Author Douglas Adams once noted that humans believe they're the most advanced species on Earth because we have achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - while dolphins consider themselves to be more intelligent for precisely the same reasons. I'm beginning to think he might have a point there.

Perhaps we're just not as optimistic as we once were. Perhaps our technology is merely reflecting our pessimism. We once believed that people could do anything; that we would populate other planets, feed the hungry, have two cars in the garage and a chicken in every pot. Now, the general view mostly seems to be that it's too costly to send people to Venus and Mars - I mean, how are we supposed to afford to wage war with expensive modern weapons if we waste money going to explore boring planets, right?

And feed the hungry? We've given up on that too. We no longer think it's a distribution problem or an efficiency problem, but rather, we believe it's the people themselves that are the problem. How else can we explain our unquestioning acceptance of "the overpopulation problem"?

No matter that we populate only about 10 per cent of the Earth's land mass. No matter that there are three times the number of chickens on Earth than people. No matter that there are far more beetles on Earth than people.

We have come to the conclusion that there are too many of us and we spend more time working on technology that will reduce our numbers than to expansion. Go forth and multiply, has become sit home and watch DVDs. Look at Northern Canada and ask yourself if we truly are overpopulated. Too cold to live there? Tell that to the Inuit and see what they say.

Besides, necessity is the mother of invention. Technology has the power of turning the inhospitable into the hospitable. All joking aside, look at Las Vegas: It's quite the amazing place - especially when you consider it's built in the middle of nowhere - in a desert for goodness' sake. If you ignore the evilness of gambling, it's a showcase for what can be done with technology when there's a will to do it.