Can anyone poin me out to movies where technology is actually shown as a good thing? All the movies I can think of which features future technology always shows it like something which ultimately causes more problems than the solutions it provides, or that it corrupts humans, or cause its destruction, or even if they're not so catastrophic they always have something which makes you say "Yeah, they have all this cool technology but look, they have X and Y problems because of it, so in the end, WE'RE BETTER AS WE ARE NOW". That's my point: all the movies I can think of always leave you with the feeling that in the end, our current situation is better than the one on the movie even though their technology is more advanced.

Is there any move which leaves you thinking "OK, we MUST keep pushing forward, we definitely are not OK as we are now", or even a movie which is, let's say, a "celebration" of technology?

McCoy, I share your frustration. There are far too many dystopian visions.

It's not exactly a movie, but... Star Trek?

I don't think Star Trek would qualify... I think it's just "neutral", the technology is merely a backdrop for the adventures, just like Star Wars. They leave no real message regarding technology.

"Things to Come" presents a positive view of technology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Things_to_Come

Weirdly enough, it postulates that a benevolent technocratic world government arises from a base in the Iraqi city of Basra, of all places.

Thanks, this is the kind of stuff I want. I'll try to watch it if I get a chance. Please keep them coming!

Things to Come! Good citation AA!

Star Trek is also generally positive. The Federation is often protrayed as enlightened, progressive and largely free of conflict internally--with a few notable exceptions, like the space hippies from old Trek and the Maquis from new Trek.

Doctor Who also has it's moments of tech-progressivism. Nearly every episode the Doctor tries to subversively break down the dystopic status quo he finds on the planets and times he lands in. One of the key points is that he is a rebel against his own society of hyperadvanced time police. He was not content to maintain stasis; he wanted to improve the universe.

The trouble is that you shouldn't expect realistic portrayals of technology from most fiction. Things often have to be simplified to highten melodrama and generate story conflict. Or, if the author is genuinely aiming for a higher ideal of enlightening the public, dystopias are entended as cautionary warnings of things we should avoid. 1984 is a very grim book but I don't know if Orwell really thought that future was unavoidable. Why write it if he thought there was no point in trying to change the world?

The interesting thing about Metropolis is how dated it is now. If you look at the hellish factories in the sublevels of the city in the film and compare to the reality of today, there are striking differences.

The hellish factories do exist today but they exist in developing countries with cheap labor, repressive governments and nonexistent laws. There were no unemployment lines in Metropolis. Poverty yes, unemployment no. Ironic considering that Metropolis was made in Weimar Germany were unemployment lines were very, very common.

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How about the 4400? It has a very transhumanist vibe, in an X-Men kind of way. Right now, they are seeming like they are going to portrey technology, developed by Future Humans as the key to our survival and fear of the 4400 and fear of change in general could bring things crashing down. That is the sense I recieved from this show after watching 2 seasons and the season premier of the 3rd season the other day.

There's some amount of positive portrayal of technology in Stargate SG-1.  One thing I found really interesting about this series, as compared to Star Trek, was that the Earthlings didn't really apply a "Prime Directive" -- if they found a planet where people were suffering, they'd use whatever technology and strategy available to help them -- and they helped people break from the grips of superstition, which I always appreciate seeing!

There was even one great episode in which they cured one planet's accelerated-aging problem by removing harmful nanomachines from people's bloodstreams that had been put there to age the people rapidly in the first place!)

Many episodes also dealt with a sub-plot involving the humans repeatedly being refused when they asked more advanced civilizations for certain pieces of technology, however, the Earthlings eventually managed to get their hands on some pieces of more advanced technology -- and use their own analysis and inventive skills to hybridize this with existing technology.  

All in all, the treatment of technology in SG-1 tends to be on the positive side of balanced.  Technology itself isn't considered a threat, however, the notion of using technology to control people or make them worship and fear you is definitely (as it should be) portrayed quite negatively.

And the series can be somewhat silly and campy, but it's definitely fun.

Yeah, I forgot the Prime Directive... that's not exactly something positive reinforced by Star Trek.

Well, they did make some exceptions on Star Trek -- in fact, it seemed like practically every episode presented a really good reason why this Directive had to be violated!  But they did tend to go on about it a lot, and I remember one episode where they were wiping people's memories so they'd forget they encountered the Enterprise crew (this was Next Gen).  That struck me as REALLY weird -- after all, it's not "natural" or "hands off" to alter people's very brains to prevent them from processing real memories of things that actually happened to them!

Same old same old

When technology, or any other influence for that matter, causes widening divisions between rich and poor, it will cause alienation with the poor. Almost always this is the essence, all other considerations are secondary.

In other words: if technology in the near future is abused by an elite to grab a bigger slice of the (ever widening) pie then the elite and their machines will (and deserve to be) smashed to pulp. Ever if that destroys the world in the process.

If these new technologies are used to widen the gap between the rich and the middle class, then that is a social and political failure. It's not inherent in the technology itself. It's a failure on the part of social to apply the technology wisely, to regulate it wisely.

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The reason they kept ignoring the Prime Directive in all versions of Star Trek is because to follow it would destroy the story for that week. Kirk engages in some militant do-goodism for Eminiar and Vendicar because, if he and the Feds walked away, that would be a boring episode.

But I think the Prime Directive is a wise idea. If I were king of any hyperadvanced society, it would be my first rule. Let others figure it out for themselves--hands off. Only if they ask for help, should you help. If they open communications with you, communicate. If they want to join your society and trade with you, that's when you start applying rules and negotiations.

On another hand, if past human history is any guide, I doubt something like a Prime Directive would ever be universally applied. There'd definitely be some moments of hypocrisy and cynicism.

Farlops, the Prime Directive also includes not making yourself known - precluding anyone asking you for help. It would be quite immoral not to even offer (say) vaccines to a tribe plagued by smallpox. In fact, I'm not even sure helping them without their desire is always wrong - say they refuse vaccines because they think it'll displease their God, and you could use nanobots to invisibly inject them (so they don't know you're doing it and psychologically suffer from fear)? What about the children - should adults have a right to keep life-saving treatments from people not capable of informed decisions because of nonsensical prejudices?