Itis hard to think of a technology that wasn’t feared when it wasintroduced. In his Atlantic article, Mr. Carr says that Socrates fearedthe impact that writing would have on man’s ability to think. Theadvent of the printing press summoned similar fears. It wouldn’tbe the last time.

When Hewlett-Packardinvented the HP-35, the first hand-held scientific calculator, in 1972,the device was banned from some engineering classrooms. Professorsfeared that engineers would use it as a crutch, that they would nolonger understand the relationships that either penciled calculationsor a slide rule somehow provided for proficient scientific thought.