Sir, Far from decrying the often uncanny competence of computers to confer countless blessings on society, I feel that we should be constantly conscious of the subtle way technology can dehumanise the unwary and manipulate its, as it were, "mobile phone owned" customers. One can refer to typing on a "processor", for example, as "key stroking" as if the latter term suggested that the machine and its user were meant to have some personal relationship, whereas one's humanity runs the risk of being robotised and frozen by the encounter.
Wherefore, one is inclined to colour an advertising slogan such as "Progress through technology ("Vorsprung durch Technik") with a qualifying thought provoking capsule of wisdom from the Swiss writer Max Frisch "Technology ... the knack of so arranging the world that we need not experience it ("Technik . . . Kniff, die Welt so einzurichten, dass wir sie nicht erleben mussen").
In this context, I recall a speech in 1988 by the Polish trade unionist and future president Lech Walesa in which he told his listeners that, while they had riches and freedom, he felt no sense of faith or direction they had so many computers, why didn't they use them in the search for love? Yours, etc., Beach Park, Laytown, Co Meath.