This is the classical view of people who see technical progress as a kind of god given fact or as the natural direction humanity must take.
It has seemed to be a pretty "natural direction" for humanity so far, at least, and technical progress continues to give humanity so much while costing us so little.
To me it seems no more bizarre a view that technical progress is a good direction for humanity to take as believing that education should become better over time, our life expectancy should continue to go up over time, or that, one day, it'd be kinda nice to travel to the stars. All those things need technical progress.
Did you see Kubrick's "2001"? Probably no other film gives a better example of the fact that education will be more important than technical progress (especially how it is today: at all costs) at any time.
No human being wants to live on a star after he/she has lived there for some generations. Wanna bet?
It has seemed to be a pretty "natural direction" for humanity so far, at least, and technical progress continues to give humanity so much while costing us so little.
To me it seems no more bizarre a view that technical progress is a good direction for humanity to take as believing that education should become better over time, our life expectancy should continue to go up over time, or that, one day, it'd be kinda nice to travel to the stars. All those things need technical progress.