Comrade Chuck,
Look, to be a bit smart-assed about it, we know what kind of social order predominates when people are reduced to pre-industrial conditions: feudalism in all its forms - warlordism, gangsterism, what have you. Compared to those social forms, fascism is a picnic in the park. Why do you think people in undeveloped parts of the world support leaders like Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein? Do you think they are all stupid or insane? They do so because it is better to be ruled by a centralized, military state than by a bunch of bandits.
Bandits prosper in social orders where people relatively less economically interdependent. Agrarian societies are minimally interdependent. Industrialized society maximizes economic interdependence. The guy who spends all his time looking at computer screen trying to derive a process to shave a few nanometers off a silicon transistor is totally dependent on thousands of people for even the premise of his livelihood, not to mention his actual, physical livelihood. That guy has a great interest in seeing society stay stable and peaceful. On the other hand, the Afghan warlord who is only concerned with stealing and extorting enough grain, furnishings and opium to put in the stores of his compound doesn't care a damn for society. He preys on society and prospers in war.
You can't go forwards by going backwards. Not only is technology not neutral, it is a human good. Machines, chemicals, plans on a drawing board are completely neutral. To call something a "technology" is to judge it useful. Usefulness is good for the user, by definition, and by and large I think that users - human beings - are good. Therefore I say that what is useful is good. Technology is good.
Take, for example, one of the nastiest technologies ever invented - DDT. Now you've got liberals begging international organizations to let developing countries use it to hold down populations of malaria mosquitoes. Why? Because DDT, like all technologies, has risks and rewards. Of course you can create an application of technology that has no use but to harm people - as with a torture machine - but the fundamental technology is still useful.
For your argument to be valid, you would have to show me a technology (as apart from an application) that has no positive use. You have to show me your Ring of Mordor before you can credibly suggest that something as obviously useful as a power plant or an automobile implies something evil in and of itself. When you say that technology is not neutral in and of itself you are indeed suggesting that it is evil in and of itself. I say it isn't.
peace,
boddi