I used to have a similar worldview. I read about the consequences of technological advance in the past always with the present firmly in mind. Who cares if there were initially some unintended consequences and collateral damage? Things got better. Advances in technology have usually increased the size of the pie. It's easy to ignore the bumps in a trendline that's steadly headed skyward. However, when you look more closely, it's not just technological advances that keep things headed in the right direction. Social advances, critically those that help divide the pie more equally, are also responsible for the bounty we enjoy today.

e.g. The industrial revolution is typically credited with a great leap forward in quality of life for the average citizen, but it actually did the opposite at first. Workers crowded into dirty, unhealthy cities and started to live shorter, nastier, more brutish lives. Initially, many English workers were legally barred from seeking employment elsewhere. If you didn't like the wages you were getting at one job and tried to take another, you could be sent to jail. It's hard to ask for a raise or even safety equipment when the alternative is jail! It was the concentration of workers in cities that allowed labor movements to form and demand changes that granted more people a fairer share of the pie, such as the right to change jobs.

Technological advance is generally a good thing, but it's social advances that harness it for all. Be wary of philosophies that ignore part of the equation. If we want to avoid bumpy periods where life gets worse for the majority of us before getting better again, we can make conscious choices about how to use new technologies.