Techn-No!

Technology -- Just Say No

...or Not Yet, Thanks.

Newsweek's treatise joins a recently robust line in tech-nay-saying: Neil Postman's Technopoly, Bill McKibben's Age of Missing Information, Sven Birkerts' Gutenberg Elegies, and Cliff Stoll's forthcoming Silicon Snake Oil. With this special issue, Newsweek clearly announces its desire to share this turf.

What could be wrong with this? When the bulldozers come out to build the Superhighway, someone has to lie down in protest, right? If "freedom" means anything in this country, doesn't it connote a deep and abiding skepticism?

Or is "critic" still and always just another word for "salesman?"