TECHNOLOGY MATTERS - QUESTIONS TO LIVE WITH

This work includes pivotal essays by a provocative Italian philosopher on memory and oblivion, on what is lost and what remains.Technology matters, writes David Nye, because it is inseparable from being human. We have used tools for more than 100,000 years, and their central purpose has not always been to provide necessities. People excel at using old tools to solve new problems and at inventing new tools for more elegant solutions to old tasks. Perhaps this is because we are intimate with devices and machines from an early age - as children, we play with technological toys: trucks, cars, stoves, telephones, model railroads, Playstations. Through these machines we imagine ourselves into a creative relationship with the world. As adults, weretain this technological playfulness with gadgets and appliances - Blackberries, cell phones, GPS navigation systems in our cars.