Some subcultures, just like the off-the-grid movement, advocate a withdrawal from technology and a return to nature. The ecovillage movement seeks to reestablish harmony between technology and nature. Major figures of techno-utopianism embody Ray Kurzweil and Nick Bostrom.
] argue that applied sciences follow no natural development, and are shaped by cultural values, laws, politics, and economic incentives. Modern scholarship has shifted towards an analysis of sociotechnical systems, “assemblages of issues, individuals, practices, and meanings”, looking at the value judgments that shape technology. Initially, technology was seen as an extension of the human organism that replicated or amplified bodily and mental faculties. Marx framed it as a device used by capitalists to oppress the proletariat, but believed that technology could be a essentially liberating pressure once it was “free of societal deformations”. In physics, the invention of nuclear fission in the Atomic Age led to both nuclear weapons and nuclear …