It’s the end of the world as we know it, and you should feel fine.

Adrian Sannier, university technology officer at Arizona State University, presented a lecture Wednesday night.

The lecture is part of a continuing series on technology, globalization and culture that is sponsored by the College of Engineering, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Deere and Company and Rockwell Collins.

Sannier asked his audience what they were afraid of. Some of the answers were the lack of oil, not having a job, local job security, global warming and sustainability. He then proceeded to break each of these things down into categories, or “the four horsemen” as he called them.

“This is a unique century we’re in,” Sannier said. “The problems are enormous, but the possibility of solutions are also right around the corner.”

Sannier also cited Robert Friedel and his book “A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millennium” in which Friedel theorizes that Western society is a problem-solving society because its citizens believe problems are solved every day.

“How many engineers in here?” Sannier asked.

After fully three-quarters of the audience members raised their hands, he said, “this is what we do” – solve the problems.

After slamming technophobic luddites and saying that school systems, governments and even citizens are guilty of proliferating this problem, Sannier said luddites believe in stopping the advancement of technology.

“We’ve got to choose between one way or another,” Sannier said.

After displaying a PowerPoint slide of an Indian woman dipping dirty water out of a stream with a clay pot and another of a large crowd of people in a refugee camp, he said his decision was made when he saw people like them.

He spent the last half of the lecture discussing his belief that college students should be getting more for their money than schools are able to provide.

“The technology that you bring to your education, you bring – the university doesn’t bring it to you,” Sannier said.

During the question-and-answer session, David Raithel, senior in mechanical engineering, asked for clarification from Sannier, asking if Sannier meant students should no longer be taught to do things by hand because it is no longer practical. Sannier said he did.

Donald Peterson, senior in mathematics, attended the lecture because it was part of his Technology, Globalization and Culture class offered by the department of mechanical engineering.

“I thought it was a great lecture,” Peterson said. “I thought that he presented a lot of points that were unorthodox and actually made me think.”

He went on to say that a lot of the presenters who give lectures go on about globalization’s effects and not what its solutions are to help solve the problems of the world.

Scott Stilwell, senior in mechanical engineering, attended the lecture because his globalization class required all students to go.

“This lecture was really good – it was really entertaining and informative,” he said.

Stilwell said he feels everything will be going in the direction of the technological revolution that Sannier talked about.