Ultimately, though, technology can never stop collapse because collapse is caused by greater complexity, and technology is one facet of complexity. The diminishing marginal returns of complexity make a society susceptible to all manner of various proximate causes for collapse, including invasion, ecological devastation, and others. Technological solutions address the proximate causes of collapse, but they do so only by exacerbating the ultimate cause of collapse, by introducing still greater complexity. Technology is part of the problem we face, not because technology is, in itself, “bad,” but because the accumulated unintended consequences of those technologies — especially Jevons Paradox — have continued to hound us. Technology can provide momentary relief or put off the inevitable, but only by compounding the problem still further. The crisis of too much complexity can never be solved by creating still more complexity, just as you can’t save your burning house by spraying gasoline on it. Ultimately, what we face is a systemic problem. No technical solution is possible to systemic problems; they can only be solved by changing the system.
-Jason Godesky, Thirty Theses, Thesis #16: Technology cannot stop collapse