It's not inevitable unless people believe it. Seriously I don't know when people collectively lost the will to actually trying and dictate the rules of our society
More explicitly: there are many cases of regulation shaping the course that technology takes. It's a strawman (of the variety people are trying to call out here) to say that we're either helpless in the face of technology or we must halt its progress. There's a huge middle ground of regulating and guiding the process.