“It is nonsense to talk about being ‘for’ or ‘against’ technology itself. Technology is common to all cultures. It is the act of turning anything into a tool, machine, or procedure, with a practical end in view.”

—Lionel Basney, “Technolotry Unmasked,” Other Side, May/June 1997

In 1965 Gordon Moore, cofounder of Intel, discovered that the performance of a computer’s memory chip doubled about every eighteen months. Known as Moore’s Law, his observation has proven to be remarkably accurate, as computing power increased over 18,000 times from 1971 to 2000.

This explosion in computing power fueled the technological accomplishments that characterized the twentieth century. The invention of the microchip in 1958 spawned a generation of silicon-based technological wonders that have recently become mainstream, including personal computers and the Internet. In 1990 only 15 percent of households in the United States owned a personal...