The BBC's Jonathan Duffy feels nervous about our propensity to buy gagdets that don't really do much of anything. "Has our lust for gadgets overshadowed an appreciation of the technologies that really make a difference?" he asks, challenging our shallow neophilia.
He comes to these thoughts in a review of David Edgerton's *The Shock of the Old: Technology in Global History Since 1900, *published by Profile Books, which takes a deeper look at things we've made in the last century or so that made a difference, from corrugated iron building materials to ubiquitous, cheap Ikea bookcases (The Billy, pictured, has sold 28m units.) It amounts to both a eulogization of new technology and a swipe at the fetish-cult of gizmos.
Having not read the book, I can't offer an opinion of it. But if the dude hates cell phones and the companies that sell them, I'm on board.
Future Imperfect [BBC]
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