Somebody: I know it's fun to over-intellectualize matters. However, when it comes to technology, the first and foremost question is this: does the ensemble of technological developments that comprise what we call progress today improve the lot of the greater mass of humanity on balance or not?
The answer, after even the most perfunctory examination, is that it is does. Sometimes the real world is actually more simple than the variegated universes of our philosophical imaginations.
I do get the impression that some on the left resent the idea that the working class could possibly achieve a greater degree of happiness without having installed a regime in it's own name. The implication to me is that most people are really more interested in their own particular political means than they are in the ends. As for me, I try as best as I feebly can, to focus upon the ends, political implications be damned. The test of right and left, capitalist and proletarian is how far they advance the lot of mankind. Nothing else in the end matters, not urbane obscurity on a mailing list, not political correctness, and not heroic contrariness.