in hunter gatherer society, the invention of the bow and arrow dramatically reduced how much time had to be spent hunting. I.E. the invention of the bow and arrow created unemployment of club hunters. However, society as a whole got wealthier, because a small number of people could provide the protein needs of the tribe, and the unemployed club hunters retrained as sweater knitters, creating sweater wealth that did not exist before.
If you look at a small version of an economy (i.e. a tribe) and consider all the people in the economy as members of the same family (i.e. a tribe) you will stop seeing unemployment, and start seeing technology increase productivity and wealth, and freeing up scarce labor resources to take on more productive tasks, for the family, i.e. for the general good.
So, one more economic example, it was just one or two hundred years ago that most of America and Western Europe worked as farmers. Technology unemployed most of them. This was a good thing, because society still got enough food, but now we had a large number of people available to stop working at subsistence and start working for the betterment (and wealthierment) of mankind.
Is anybody arguing against this view? Seriously?
and short run long run... the benefits in the long run are quite simply worth the short run. Would my fellow slashdotters prefer to live 10% behind where we are now technologically? 10% starting 1000 years ago? 10,000 years ago?