13/8/2010, www.telegraph.co.uk  One Hundred Fears of Solitude by Hal Crowther: extract

“’…with me no matter where I am – I wouldn’t mind if I could have them implanted in my body’.

“Alone with his thoughts”, now a literary anachronism, was a commonplace reality. Without that freedom to disconnect, then and now, I for one would have gone mad…

“… The late Joseph Weizenbaum, an MIT mathematician and computer scientist … believed that obsessive reliance on technology was a moral failure in society and an invitation to fascism…

“… Palevsky, founder of the computer-chip giant Intel, told an interviewer in 2008, “I don’t own a computer. I don’t own a cellphone, I don’t own any electronics. I do own a radio.”

“Given decades to reflect on what they wrought, it’s eerie that many of the scientists who created our electronic cocoon sound like the scientists who worked on the atom bomb at Los Alamos …

“Though the educational potential of the internet is limitless, it’s becoming apparent that students use technology less to learn than to distract themselves from learning…

“Reading and writing skills among eighth graders decline each year, as internet penetration rises…”