He goes on to state: "Culture always pays a price for technology. For every advantage a new technology offers, there's always a corresponding disadvantage. All technological change is a Faustian bargain".

With this sort of simplistic rhetoric one doesn't get very far, given that one could easily apply the same logic to anything in nature. For example, wolves have recently been restored to the Yellowstone National Park, after discovering that they represent a very welcome and needed element in the ecosystem of the park and after having been hunted into near extinction. This return of the wolves has been accomplished over the strong protestations of those that perceive such wolves as a threat or at best a nuisance. Tobacco brings harm to millions of smokers, yet it also represents a means for survival to tens of thousands of farmers. Yesterday's floods bring along the promise of new yields in the crops of the following season. As you can observe, the threat of catastrophe, or a "Faustian bargain" can be found wherever one chooses to look. It goes without saying that for every advantage there will always be a disadvantage. Otherwise, how to explain that people do drugs, expose themselves to AIDS or defend the right to own a gun.

I have yet to find evidence for many of the theoretical fears presented by those who declare themselves as guardians of the good order. It goes without saying that technologies can be abused, but so can antibiotics, and this hasn't stopped them from being used properly. I guess that anyone can take issue with something that is exaggerated in its application. As Nicolas Negroponte recently pointed out, even reading for five hours every day is probably not in the best interest of a child, as good and important as reading might be, one has to introduce diversity in a child's upbringing.

How about all those arguments against technologies because they alienate us, or dehumanize our relationships, or what have you; they seem to be more often than not just a provocation. People in pursuit of their ambitions have wrecked more havoc on mankind through their greed, than any examples of technology I can think of.

I don't believe that the present day tribal wars in Africa, with hundreds of thousands killed, have much to do with computers, but with the problems left behind by the departing colonial powers, or for that matter, the dead-end in the lives of literally millions of human beings brought on by the bureaucracies out of control in the socialist nations of the recent past, they had nothing to do with computers either. If anything it was their absence on which so much of their power was based. Lack of controls and information have a wonderful way of ofuscating the goings-on behind the scene. The destruction brought about by massive bombing missions in Vietnam and Cambodia, as the ex-secretary of defense MacNamara recently pointed out, was the folly of politicians and their personal ambitions, not of the tools they had available for inflicting destruction on to others. Those same tools could have been used in a legitimate way for defense purposes as the title of the office he held is named.

When we blame technologies for many of our present day ills, we tend to forget where we come from. The history of mankind throughout the ages and civilizations hasn't been precisely an ideal model which one could say has worked so brilliantly, were it not for technologies. Far from it, if anything, I would venture to say that the overall quality of life has improved to some degree by their use, even though this has been accomplished unevenly between rich and poor, and north and south. One can still see improvements even among those groups which some reactionary anthropologists would like to keep protected from what they say are the "evils" of modern day life. Where "hand made huaraches", which are very hard on the feet, are exalted, these same critics have no compunction in wearing themselves the comfortable sneakers they so decry for having displaced the huaraches.