A Canticle For Leibowitz
A Canticle For Leibowitz is a story about how the development of technology can lead to the downfall of human civilization. The book opens hundreds of years after the world is destroyed by nuclear war. It depicts the descendants of the survivors rediscovering lost knowledge and piecing machines back together. Eventually, a new civilization is formed and grows until it reaches the same technological level as the civilization that came before it. And another nuclear war happens. Everything is destroyed, again. Here is depicted a pessimistic outlook of the future of technological development. It is to have a cyclical nature: the civilization that pursues enlightenment will inevitably destroy itself, and a new one will rise from its ashes to repeat its same mistakes.
This book addresses the dangers of knowledge. When reading, I asked myself is it better to risk the pursuit of knowledge, or be ignorant. Of course, right now the answer is yes, as the benefits of modern technology strongly outweigh the risks. But I wondered how could we know whether or not a technology will be invented in the future that is too powerful, too unpredictable, that whatever visions of good that made us build it are dwarfed in comparison to its dangers. In the book, nuclear energy was that dangerous technology. In real life, robotics and AI, especially used as weapons of war, could be more dangerous than useful to humankind. These reflections and questions I had after my readthrough have made me more aware of the consequences of certain technologies.
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/164154.A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz
