Another reason that the general public is ignorant of what society owes to technology is that historians don't tell and neither do scientists.

As noted in the associated file on Industrial Revolutions, THE MECHANICAL INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION occurred in the 12th and 13th centuries when monks spread windmills and watermills across Europe. What is usually called "The Industrial Revolution", circa 1776, should be called "The Thermodynamic Industrial Revolution", since it involved the development of a working steam engine. So the Civil War coulld be called "A War Between Two Industrial Revolutions: Mechanical and Thermodynamic". For, the Southern States constituting the Confederacy were at a technological level only a little above that of monks in the 12th-13th centuries and the Amish even of today. But the New England States which initiated the Union effort were at the level of the Thermodynamic Industrial Revolution.