Why spend time criticising technology? Langdon Winner expresses this succinctly in the preface of his seminal book, The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology.

« In its approach to these matters, this is a work of criticism. If it were literary criticism, everyone would immediately understand that the underlying purpose is positive. A critic of literature examines a work, analyzing its features, evaluating its qualities, seeking a deeper appreciation that might be useful to other readers of the same text. In a similar way, critics of music, theater, and the arts have a valuable, well-established role, serving as a helpful bridge between artists and audiences. Criticism of technology, however, is not yet afforded the same glad welcome. Writers who venture beyond the most pedestrian, dreary conceptions of tools and uses to investigate ways in which technical forms are implicated in the basic patterns and problems of our culture are often greeted with the charge that they are merely "antitechnology" or "Blaming technology." All who have recently stepped forward as critics in this realm have been tarred with the same idiot brush, an expression of the desire to stop a much needed dialogue rather than enlarge it. If any readers want to see the present work as "antitechnology," make the most of it. That is their topic, not mine.

What does interest me, however, is identified in the book's subtitle: A Search for Limits. In an age in which the inexhaustible power of scientific technology makes all things possible, it remains to be seen where we will draw the line, where we will be able to say, here are possibilities that wisdom suggests we avoid. I am convinced that any philosophy of technology worth its salt must eventually ask, How can we limit modern technology to match our best sense of who we are and the kind of world we would like to build? In several contexts and variations, that is my question throughout. »