>technology leaches the soul of an environment<p>If you read Plutarch (iirc, not a classicist) you get to read probably the first example of this kind of mororse and reactionary bitching - he too was afraid that the times (they are a' changin') were leaching the soul from the natural rural order. It was probably not a new thought then.<p>The problem with reading all the hottest and most fashionable thinkers is you don't notice when you're just repeating an argument that has been done ad-nauseum, a sort of philosophical smudge through the years that starts off sharp, has some interesting turns, but ends up just grey and greasy.<p>Why not take the opposite route? Why not explore the new, subtle, perceptual possibilities of 'cheap' recording technology - instead of doing this tired old harking back to the pure innnocence of an imagined prior experience? I think it would be a more interesting line of thought. I think it's more relevant to our time - we are, after all, encountering the biggest sense organ ever devised, the internet. Seems a bit more interesting than some seriously hackneyed oppositions between raw natural experience and technologically mediated illusion.