Concern about the impact of technology on contemporary
life is by no means limited to evangelicals. Voices
across the political and social spectrum have begun to
suggest that scientific advances are at least partly responsible
for the psychological malaise now so prevalent in
much of the modern world. The criticism dates back at
least to the advent of television. Television, in the eyes of
its critics, has contributed to a decline in human communication
and turned viewers from active participants in
the experience of life into passive observers. With the advent
of the computer, the process has accelerated as recent
generations of young people raised on video games
and surfing the World Wide Web find less and less time
for personal relationships or creative activities. At the
same time, however, the Internet provides an avenue for
lonely individuals to communicate with the outside
world and seek out others with common interests. The
most that can be said at the present time is that such innovations
provide both an opportunity and a danger—
an opportunity to explore new avenues of communication
and a danger that in the process, the nature of the
human experience will be irrevocably changed.
World History
