What is the source talking about? Source: Bernhard J. Stern, “The Challenge of Advancing Technology,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1945.
Even before the announcement of the unlocking of atomic energy, it could be said that advances in technology during the years of the war had been far greater than during many preceding decades. . . . With the development of prefabricated houses, transport and passenger planes and helicopters, quick-frozen, dehydrated, and other processed and packaged foods, improved gasoline, and new and improved types of power for industrial production, for transportation, for illumination, and for easing household burdens, cities can be freer to develop functionally in terms of the harmonious living of their populations. Advances in public health and in medicine have made possible precipitous declines in death and morbidity rates, so that healthy city populations can enjoy the leisure which shorter working hours make available to them. Illiteracy and ignorance, long anachronisms in industrial societies, can more easily be liquidated through advances in human psychology and in educational processes.
The tools are ready. Will we be thwarted in their use?

Is it like, the opportunity for change is here, but will we take it type thing?