Just to further some views in your arguments.
As I recall, in 1812
Parliament was not yet dominated by the new manufacturing classes, but still by the landowners. The
Frame Breaking Act was more necessary vis-a-vis the efforts against the Napoleonic Wars and the continental system to keep production on the go.
On to the core of the matter. Outlawpoet underlines accurately the dangers but also the good sides of technological advances. It is also true that "barbaric livelihoods" are still to be found.
The debate on technology should be one with a deeper and a wider vision. There are two approaches to technology: the humanitarian and the commercial. The former would be such solutions as the polio vaccine, administered through large-scale organisations such as WHO. The commercial approach is the pure profit-making use of technology whether in military, pharmaceutical or business equipment. One can conclude that technology is a tool, and it is its use that determines its positive or negative outcome.
However, there is also another aspect that is being left out if one talks about a global vision of technology.
Where is technology to be found? The answer is simply that it is a small percentage of world population that HAS technology. The danger is that every day the gap between worlds that only had a socio-economic problem to overcome, will now find themselves with a widening technological gap.
Furthermore, there is also the risk of a technological stratification of society even in the First World. The first real danger was sensed when mobile phones appeared. Luckily, the fact that the market grew so fast has allowed easy acces to virtually everyone's fingertips in the First World.
One cannot ask technological innovations to stop... they will not. One cannot demand that cloning should not take place... it will (food cloning and genetically-modified crops -such as cold resistant wheat- are necessary solutions to a world population always on the increase). What one should demand are the imposition of certain limits, but which in no way should be argued as being permanent.
Change is life's fuel.