Why do we use technology?

I was trying to convey to my students one of the biggest benefits of technology is that we can solve problems that are too expensive, time consuming or dangerous to solve in real life! They finally got it when I asked them to research the cost of sending a rocket into orbit one time, and then we played this game called Gravity Launch. Totally fun for them and it served my purpose. As we were playing the game I asked them to record into a spreadsheet each "trial" that they did with their rocket. In the end they had to multiply the number of "trials" by the cost they found! We're talking massive amounts of money were wasted in my classroom today, good thing we had technology!