We do tend to turn our tools into our gods. Witness money as a medium of exchange, enabling markets, to the end in itself, under capitalism.

Part of the problem is that we are linear, goal seeking creatures in a cyclical, reciprocal feedback generated reality, so while we assume more is better, eventually the postive feedback goes negative.

The world actually is round and eventually we will come to terms with it. Though it seems the smarter we get, the more egotistical we get and each stage requires a little more effort and destruction.