The rapid developments in technologies -- especially computing and the advent of many 'smart' devices, as well as rapid and perpetual communication via the Internet -- has led to a frequently voiced view which Nicholas Agar describes as 'radical optimism'. Radical optimists claim that accelerating technical progress will soon end poverty, disease, and ignorance, and improve our happiness and well-being. Agar disputes the claim that technological progress will automatically produce great improvements in subjective well-being. He argues that radical optimism 'assigns to technological progress an undeserved pre-eminence among all the goals pursued by our civilization'. Instead, Agar uses the most recent psychological studies about human perceptions of well-being to create a realistic model of the impact technology will have. Although he accepts that technological advance does produce benefits, he insists that these are significantly less than those proposed by the radical optimists, and aspects of such progress can also pose a threat to values such as social justice and our relationship with nature, while problems such as poverty cannot be understood in technological terms. He concludes by arguing that a more realistic assessment of the benefits that technological advance can bring will allow us to better manage its risks in future.

Nicholas Agar is Reader in Philosophy at Victoria University. He has spent much of his academic career writing about ethical and philosophical issues that arise in connection with new technologies.

• Introduction
• 1: Radical optimism and the technology bias
• 2: Is there a law of technological progress?
• 3: Does technological progress make us happier?
• 4: The new paradox of progress
• 5: We need technological progress experiments
• 6: Why technological progress won't end poverty
• 7: Choosing a tempo of technological progress
• 8: Afterword: Don't turn well-being technologies into Procrustean beds
• References
• Index