ABSTRACT
Technology is and always has been a power, a force, that is 'about itself' but in its earlier simpler forms, that is until the nineteenth century, technology could be seen as largely beneficial to people indeed as their increasingly powerful servant. Minsky's approach is the approach of a Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, co-founder of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, who designed and built the first neural network learning machine. In the article Minsky effectively criticises the way our genetic system operates in that it was 'not designed for very long term maintenance'. The remarkable spread in the use of mobile telephones is a further indication of how we are becoming caught up in a process that is biological as well as technological. Awareness of the disparity between the rapidity of technological change and people's ability to cope with it is increasingly appearing in the popular press.
