...the benefits and deficits of a new technology are not distributed equally. There are, as it were, winners and losers. It is both puzzling and poignant that on many occasions the losers, out of ignorance, have actually cheered the winners and some still do...
It is to be expected that the winners will encourage the loses to be enthusiastic about computer technology. That is the way of winners, and so they sometimes tell the losers that with personal computers the average person can balance a chequebook more neatly, keep better track of recipes, and make more logical shopping lists. They also tell them that their lives will be conducted more efficiently. But discreetly they neglect to say from whose point of view the efficiency is warranted, or what might be its costs. Should the losers grow sceptical, the winners dazzle them with the wondrous feats of computers, all of which have only marginal relevance to the quality of the losers' lives but which are nonetheless impressive.
Technopoly p9&11
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