CHAPTER 3THE TECHNOLOGY TRAP
In the 1990s, Western societies’ love affair with technology went global. Cuba became a biotech center and personal computers became status symbols from Santiago, São Paulo, and Shanghai, to Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Delhi, and Dakar, to Jakarta and Johannesburg. Those inculcated in nonmaterialist Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism were equally enthralled. Much of it turned out to be a masculine trip, judging from the demographics of Internet users. As I suggested in a speech to eager U.S. technophiles in 1976, paradigms shift slowly and transformations from pre- to post-industrial societies are wildly uneven step functions.1 Beyond the Solar Age lies a future based on light waves: photonics and bio- and nano-technologies ...
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