Unbound: How Eight Technologies Made Us Human and Brought Our World to the Brink

by Richard L. Currier

In the final analysis, the technology of precision machinery—and the urbanization of human society that that technology made possible—has rendered the so-called traditional family, with its assumption of lifelong permanence, essentially obsolete. The arranged marriage has become a thing of the past. The economic benefits of having children have been replaced by significant economic costs. The economic and social interdependence between men and women has weakened considerably. And not only virginity in adolescence but also the traditional prohibitions against premarital and extramarital sex have lost most or all of their former social stigma. Yet the human family survives and will continue to survive. Men and women will continue to form sexual partnerships, and they will continue to have children. Those who are not inclined to procreate will contribute neither their inherited biological predispositions nor their learned cultural preferences to future generations. While the “traditional family” has become obsolete, the human family has not. Our innate human natures, the product of millions of years of human evolution, ensure that the human family will survive as long as our species endures.