It is sometimes said that we don’t choose technology, it chooses us.  It is certainly possible to live in today’s world without a cell phone, a computer, or a car but it would require individuality and resolve.  Whether you are an early adopter, a late-comer, or a total Luddite, sooner or later technology will hunt you down. 

Technology and culture have a difficult relationship.  The latter, comprised as it is of large numbers of human beings, is fundamentally resistant to change.  Technology, on the other hand, is initially driven by a much smaller subset of entrepreneurial folks who embrace change as a way of life. 

Consider the automobile.  Fred Flintstone notwithstanding, Carl Benz’s 1886 US Patent 37435 for a gas-engine-powered vehicle is often referred to as the birth certificate of the car.  Early autos were noisy, unreliable, fume-spewing contraptions that threatened the existing equine transportation system more by scaring the animals than by providing a superior alternative.  By 1913, Henry Ford’s mass-produced Model T was affordable, reliable, and easy to operate. Before long the roads were paved, and hitching posts were becoming scarce. <continue>