That's the end of the human era - the closest analogy would be the rise of the human race within the animal kingdom. Fifty years into the future. If my ideas about the singularity are true, it will happen within 50 years. Either way, I gain good information - information that might be profitable if I chose to come back. That second explanation has gained a lot of weight in my mind, because I can see us becoming weird - before my very eyes.
Technology is neutral in the sense that it needs some human medium to express itself.
But I think technology is close enough to being out of control that human intervention has become a weaker and weaker constraint. Also, it's important to regard technology in the long sweep of history as being one with history. In fact, it's one with biology, one with the rise of multicellular life forms, and it's headed someplace - probably. But it's not alien to the sweep of development and beauty and order in the universe. Oh, to be a whole lot smarter and live forever.