Abstract: The idea of the paper was inspired by the article of Jagdish Bhagwati in “The Financial Times”, October 16, 2008. The author mentions the possible difference between the non-financial innovation, wthat Joseph Schumpeter famously called “creative destruction”, and the financial innovation that may be considered as one of the reasons of the present global economic crises. The paper analyses and compares different standpoints to on technological development in the history of economic and philosophic thought, paying more attention to those, who discussed not only the bright sides of technological discoveries, but also the threat that they may cause to the mankind as well. Karl Marx considered technological changes as the roots of collapse of the capitalist system due to the laws of capitalist motion. Thorsten Veblen’s institutionalism asserted that the interactions between technological institutions and ceremonial institutions may be the driving force of changes in the social system. Joseph Schumpeter predicted the possible collapse of the capitalist system as the result of the draining away of the forces of “creative destruction”, that are the basis of the entrepreneurship and the mainspring of the capitalism. John Kenneth Galbraith in his “The New Industrial State” and his other his writings developed the ideas of American institutionalists and his teacher Joseph Schumpeter. The problems of technological development are widely discussed not only among economists, but philosophers and even writers as well. The English writer Herbert George Wells may be considered regarded as one of the most successful prophets of the technological innovations in the XX century. But in oppositecontrary to another famous prophet – Jules Verne, Wells regardconsidered that such innovations may cause more threat than benefit to the mankind. In a large degreeTo great extent he was right and a large part on inventions were primarily were used in military operations. Do the people really benefit from the technological development? The paper discusses also the “Ethics of Enough” by the American philosopher Mortimer Jerome Adler, who analyzsed and developed the Aristotle’s exploration of “moral virtue”. If the present trends in the direction of mankind and the way of thinking will remain unchanged, itthose may bring such problems, that the present global economic crisies may seem a particular compared to them.