Viewing file details for :

Technology, Trust and Terror

Type : pdf

Size : 51.95 KB

Download : Technology, Trust and Terror.pdf

The beguiling but ultimately mistaken notion that technologies are ‘merely tools’ – things we pick up, use and then put away – poses a major barrier for understanding how we live today. Missing in the tool/use perspective is an acknowledgment of a basic fact about people’s relationship to the technological realm: our utter dependence upon the large, complex, artificial systems that surround us on every side, giving structure to everything we do. For countries in the North, such dependence is welcomed with open arms because it seems crucial to prosperity and freedom. Large-scale, geographically extensive technologies enable us to move about as we wish, to communicate freely and to be released from the urgent demands of day-to-day survival that confronted previous generations and that still vex the less prosperous nations around the globe.