Faith & Folklore vs Technology

I saw a wonderful little line the other day that's been bouncing around my brain ever since: "cell phone cameras deter aliens".

The point, made as astutely as ever by Seth was that now that the cell phone and its high quality cameras were ubiquitous, the instances of sighting alien spacecraft has gone way down.  Prior to our always-connected world where something wasn't real unless it was instagram'ed, the instances of sighting flying saucers were folklore, and generally not independently confirmable.  Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and other such popular myths have similarly suffered from the emergence of connected-awareness. Does this demonstrate these situations as fallacy, or wishful thinking ?  Perhaps a little, yes.

It's interesting and unintentional that technology has started to give us tools to dispel or prove those things that required only faith in the past.  And that got me thinking.  What technology would emerge that would have a similarly profound impact on our beliefs and ways of life that we've had to take on faith until now.  Would time travel and the ability to go backwards into our history and validate or prove false the fundamental precepts of Christianity, or Islam forever change our religious beliefs?  Will cancer 'vaccines' tip us over the edge due to food production limitations, as our population swells with healthy people.  Will the ability to manipulate the sex of your unborn baby mean football is that much more competitive, and even more wars break out as the world tips towards having more territorial males..?

The unintended consequences of 'advancements' are fascinating to imagine.  But it does make you want to loosen your grip a little on your most sacred truths as well I think.