Many of our inventions seem to beget more "externalities" than improve our lives. What would it take for us to focus our sights on appropriate technologies—tools that work with us instead of for us so as to raise our standards of living, instead of inventing more tools for novelty's sake (as is the imperative of capitalism)?

cf: the entirety of tools-for-conviviality

e.g. the bicycle, on the speed vs efficiency plot

modern large-scale development [...] has given us air-conditioning, not as an improvement, but as a necessary addition, since modern buildings have lost the magic of pleasant temperatures that clung to the thick-walled houses of former times.

— breakdown-of-nationsp. 138

Will the Fediverse become an appropriate technology? Or will it go the way of the shitstorm that is the rest of the internet?