Have you heard about the new Sony camcorder that sees through your clothes? Earlier this year, Sony debuted a line of Handycam models sporting a feature called NightShot, designed to help the cameras film in low-light situations by picking up infrared light.

Thing is, if you use the feature in broad daylight and put a certain photo filter on the camera (easily obtained), you can see right through someone’s clothing.

In other words, if you thought no one knew you weren’t wearing underwear today, think again.

After realizing the power of NightShot, Sony quickly changed the cameras they sold so that NightShot would only work in low-light situations, but not before thousands of the “X-ray vision” models were sold (snapshots available on a Web site near you).

Depending on your perspective, this camera is either the best new product or the worst to hit the shelves this year.

But its advent serves as an interesting reminder that technological advancement isn’t the same as progress.

That’s right: I’m using the Sony Handycam to challenge one of the most fundamental premises to our society — that technological progress is good.

As an Iowa State student, I spend most of my time in a community oriented toward research.

This is a technical school, and most people around here seem to be devoting a decent portion of their lives to furthering our technological prowess.

I ask you: for what? Most research is presumably done in the hopes of creating positive change in the world, but is anything worthwhile being accomplished?

Most people don’t give those questions a second thought, but they should. Just because the assumption that research and new discoveries advance our standard of living and therefore make life somehow better is commonplace doesn’t make it true.

Here’s the problem: It all revolves around a nebulous concept known as “standard of living.”

“Standard of living” is a term invented by economists to measure a person or group of people’s economic well-being.

It is the yardstick for determining our progress, essentially.

It’s a pretty warped yardstick.

Evaluation of a person’s standard of living examines how capable a person is of meeting their wants and, to a lesser extent, their needs (mainly because needs are usually met in the first few thousands dollars of income or less, and most Americans have far more than that). It fails to take into account something far more important than who has the most stuff: emotional state.

It assumes that fulfilling one’s material wants makes a person happier.

What if country A has a higher per capita income than country B, but everyone is either on an antidepressant or commits suicide? Can we honestly call them better simply because their standard of living is higher?

Such a scenario isn’t too far-fetched, actually.

A good deal of research has been done to examine the link between prosperity and happiness, and (surprise!) the link is not strong. Findings suggest that in poor countries, being decently well-off significantly DOES affect morale.

In richer countries, however, the link between happiness and income is “surprisingly weak (indeed, virtually negligible),” according to University of Michigan researcher Ronald Inglehart.

The U.S. has enjoyed fantastic economic and technological growth since 1957. Percentages of households with dishwashers, air conditioners and clothes dryers have all more than tripled since then.

But the number of people identifying themselves as “very happy” since then has decreased 5 percent, according to the University of Chicago. We’re three times as rich and not any happier.

In fact, some studies indicate we’re much worse off. University of Pennsylvania researchers report that depression has increased tenfold among Americans born since World War II.

Maybe we should stop and think about how much good our research efforts are truly doing. How beneficial to society is a new, life-lengthening drug if those lives are miserable?

How valuable is it to devote your life to technological innovation when those technological changes don’t make anyone feel better?

Maybe we ought to take a few steps back from our fast-paced lives and try to figure out what’s really important before we, as a culture, keep pouring our energy into developing cameras that see through people’s clothes. Technological change isn’t the same as progress.

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Ben Byrne is a senior in graphic design from Edina, Minn.