Question

Has the Rabbi read the book? Part of the book’s basic idea is that they find a solution for everything so that a person will have “constant comfort” whether he wants it or not, and the hero of the story wants to go back to the past, to get the flu, to be sad (anyone who is sad there automatically takes a pill that makes him happy), to stand up against his urges (there is total sexual permissiveness there, because why suffer? So “everyone belongs to everyone”).
If we ignore the security need to advance technologically, wouldn’t it have been preferable to give up all these forms of engineering? Smartphones, smart homes…
In terms of happiness, everyone agrees that our generation, with all its inventions and endless convenience on every side, is no happier (and some would say sadder) than any other period in history, including hunter-gatherers, the Middle Ages, and so on. So I’m not saying let’s eat straw and sleep in the street, but I already no longer look favorably on all the fervor for technological progress and high-tech that is happening these days, but only as a necessity, because we must not fall technologically behind when we have enemies. Of course there are also good things—we find cures for diseases and the like—but maybe the gain is not worth the loss?
In my view, countries like Bhutan and the like (I’m not knowledgeable enough) that technologically stopped 50 years ago seem to me, overall, to have acted wisely.
So my question is: would the Rabbi theoretically support freezing technological progress (again, if we ignore the security threat)?
P.S. Everything I wrote has nothing to do with the study of science itself, which I value very highly! I remember a class by the Rabbi in Plato course saying that theoretically, even if there were a way to produce all the technology that comes from studying the sciences without studying the science itself, the Rabbi would still study science for its own sake even without any practical benefit from it—and that’s what I’m talking about.