There is no technological determinism. But each fundamental invention enables new fundamental inventions, making a chain reaction impossible to avoid.

Why do we have to keep making things better and faster? Are we not content with the highest living standards in human history? Is life not fast enough? Not convenient enough? What do we want?

Silly us; those questions don't matter! It's built into our soul-print: the musician will play, the writer will write, the tinkerer will tinker. Asking us to stop progress is asking us to stop all these things -- to stop life -- and we can't, not even if we wanted to. Progress is just what happens when people live.
Dave Dahl

[ The nanomachine is a fine-motion controller for molecular assembly, due to K. Eric Drexler. The atomic coordinates were converted with povchem, written by Paul Thiessen ]