| Pubic response to technology often
varies in peculiar ways. While biotechnology, for example, gives rise to
organized opposition, information technology, which is actually no less
invasive(侵害者), no more harmless, is welcomed or, at the least, accepted
with comparatively little debate. Information technologies—from computers to communications—have obviously had an overwhelming social impact and their benefits hardly need explanations. But they have also disturbed privacy and threatened civil liberties. Computerized data banks empower bureaucratic authorities by providing easy access to personal information—about credit ratings, social performance, housing and medical histories. They will allow access to genetic figures, providing information about our tendencies to employers, insurers, product advertisers, banks and other institutions that exercise control over our lives. Computerization allows the severe extension of advertising through telemarketing requests that shamelessly intrude our home life. Information technologies have displaced people from jobs and turned potentially skilled workers into low-level computer technicians, computers have facilitated the work of scholars, but also turned them into typists; yet one hears hardly a complaint. They have turned the simple act of buying a plane ticket into an endless manipulation(控制), but we welcome the so-called convenience. They have encouraged new forms of crime and fraud(欺诈), but we describe them with grudging admiration. They have allowed new types of evil weaponry, but we call them "smart bombs". Perhaps the most important, information technologies have extended the power of the mass media, creating unusual possibilities for political manipulation, reducing accountability(有责任，有义务), and changing the nature of political life. It is true that there are critiques(批评) of information technologies from those professionally concerned about their problematic legal, social and political implications. There is a near total absence, however, of organized public concern about technologies with profound and problematic implications. |