Technology Problems

Of all the forces shaping human experience today, technology is the least understood. Since the Enlightenment, intellectuals have either ignored technological systems or mythologized them. Few have confronted both the manifold dimensions of the marriage between corporate finance and commercial engineering or the way in which discrete innovations are subordinated to technical architectures, or systems, that alter consciousness and social relations. Given the poverty of technological analysis, it is hard to judge who is more dangerous. The humanist who recoils at the commercial core of technology, or the literate enthusiast who declares a revolution at every turn.

This is not to suggest that nuanced thinkers offer any more compelling explanations than Witold Rybczynski's (1983) bald insistence that "technology is not everything." It is correct to say (though of little solace) that a myriad gushing streams flow into the raging river of technology. Consumers invariably learn how to navi...