What is the purpose of technical progress?
 

Has anyone here asked himself: what is the purpose of technical progress performed by humankind? Any action has to have a goal, right? What about "technical progress"?

The abstract concept of "technical progress" doesn't have a goal -- it is like evolution and is used to describe the amalgamation of lots of individual changes all made to to improve something within its own niche.
The reason for computers getting faster, for example, is that faster processors get the more things we realise they can be used for -- they started off as people doing things like producing log charts and using them to calculate bridge spans then through combinations of things like Jacquard looms and and telephone switches became things that, for example, video can be produced on. There was never a goal in the minds of those employing people to do mathematics for them that some day they would be replaced by machines which produced Toy Story.

How can you tell all those changes improve something? Doesn't progress make anything worse?

Depends if you would be happy scratching your question on a cave wall with a rock.

By definition any change which gives something a better chance of fitting in its niche improves it. It might make other things worse but that is my point -- technological progress is the sum of a lot of changes in many areas and their effect upon everything else.
For example I think the iPhone and the touchy-feely interface is a regression because it represents a loss of functionality however, from an evolutionary point of view it was an improvement.
Technological progress isn't a thing with hopes and dreams and drives and there is no "technological progress committee" guiding it. It is simply a way of describing the changes which take place in technology.

You can't know the goal until you get there.

I'm hoping the goal is to make life less of a hell, like it is for the rest of the animals.

I'm hoping the goal is NOT to use humans as a tool to build a self-sustaining infrastructure in which the majority of humans will no longer serve a purpose / no longer be needed, i.e. to replace humans with something else, probably robots.

I'd generalize this.

What is the purpose of living?

Absolutely "progress" can make things worse. Now is the time to buy beachfront property in Pennsylvania :) Bopal, 3 mile island, Chernobyl.

For the first time in history the technological tools are available for a police state like the US to lock down fascism forever.

"Progress" as an ideal also seems in the west to be connected with leisure and quality of life for its citizens, but of course the dirt poor third world and sweat shop labor that makes it possible doesnt see much progress. So any metric that measured quality of life as progress would have to take everyone into account equally.

As I understand your sentence, there are two kinds of creatures — people and evolution. And people make changes in technology to please evolution even if it harms other people. Sounds strange but that's the picture I get out of cited piece of text.

Well, that's not the attitude one should do something with, right? First you have to set a goal and then work in that direction. Not vice versa.

That's a question for religious discussion, and we have a technical one here.

No people do not try "to please evolution" evolution is a concept used to describe how things change to fill a niche. You are talking about abstract processes as if they are actual beings and about people's actions as if they are somehow doing what they are doing for some abstract ideal.
Companies make changes to products to sell them and, sometimes, looked at from a technical perspective those changes may be or seem like a regression. Apple are not making decisions based upon any abstract concepts like "technical progress" nor is anyone else.
I really don't understand what you think technological progress actually is and who you think can somehow control it?
There is nobody on earth who is working towards "technical progress".

Here you are confusing abstract concepts with attainable goals.
It is absolutely impossible to deliberately work towards technological progress because it is a concept used to describe how technology is progressing. There is also absolutely no goal and no finishing point to technological progress it can only be seen in history and its future is by definition impossible to predict in any meaningful way.

273, I agree.

Your attitude towards progress should be: take what you need, leave what you don't.

Practically speaking, progress is a mixed bag. Take what is useful and will make your life easier and better, and leave what is likely to only complicate your life or increase the burden on you (smartphones, tablets, facebook, twitter).

The theories I posted above are only if you believe that progress is guided by a hand from above, either religious or political. However, as I don't like either topic, I won't discuss them.