NEGATIVE - CRITIQUE OF TECHNOLOGY 164

TECHNOLOGY ADVANCE DESTROYS COMMUNITY

INCREASED USE OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES TRADES OFF WITH OUR SENSE OF COMMUNITY

Paul Van Slambrouck, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor, The Christian Science Monitor, December 28, 1999, SECTION: USA; THE LONGER VIEW; Pg. 2 TITLE: In world of high tech, everyone is an island // acs-EE2001

"Digital technologies encourage us to abandon whatever vestiges of community are left to us," says Stephen Talbott, a former software programmer who has developed a small but devoted following for his NetFuture online newsletter. "This is a disastrous loss, since our encounters with others and with the world are the primary matrix for all human growth and development."

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY DISCONNECTS US FROM COMMUNITY AND NATURE

Generally, critics say technology disconnects people from nature, their communities, and one another. But most disturbing to many of them is the lack of critical thinking about technology's impact, a worry compounded by the sheer speed of change in the computer age. "There is this ideology of laissez faire" when it comes to computer technology, says Richard Sclove of the Loka Institute, "and most people have bought into it."

TECHNOLOGY PROPELS US TO TOTALITARIANISM

Murray Bookchin, Social ecologist, REMAKING SOCIETY, 1989, p. 171.

Our viability as a species depends upon our future relationship with the natural world. This problem cannot be settled by the invention of new technologies that will supplant natural processes without making societies more technocratic, more centralized, and ultimately completely totalitarian.