I like to put this sort of hypothetical issue to people. Suppose it were 1906 and we knew what we know now about the automobile with a combustion engine and we were able to have a conversation about it, a national conversation, and someone listed for us all of the benefits of the automobile, which are many, and then all of the deficits, including that it would poison our air and choke our cities and create the suburbs -- some people would put on that side, but I might put on this side -- and then we said, "Let's discuss this and then we'll have a plebiscite. We now know what it will do, and we know what it will undo." I think most Americans would say, "Let's go ahead with it anyway." But someone is bound to say, "Let's go ahead with it, but is there anything we could do to reduce this list over here, to minimize the negative consequences?"
Well, in 1906, if we had had such a conversation, even with limited knowledge, there probably were things we could have done to reduce the negative items on the list. When television came along, it would have been, in theory, possible to have the same conversation. "What are the benefits, what are the deficits? Let's talk about it and then let's see is there anything we can plan to do that would minimize the deficits?" Well, we didn't have such a conversation, and with the computers now, we're not having such a conversation. All we hear is what they will do for us. We don't hear what they will undo. So one of the purposes of a book like this was to see if it's possible to start such a conversation and make us more sophisticated in our approach to our new technologies and, for that matter, old technologies.