High-tech/high-touch: Technology and Our Search for Meaning

In this important and timely book encompassing the key trends of our time, John Naisbitt, the world's foremost social forecaster and bestselling author, takes us on a compelling and kaleidoscopic tour of our contemporary 'technology immersion' and our accelerated search for meaning. High Tech/High Touch shows how we need to understand technology through a human lens - to comprehend life-science technologies through theology, consumer technology through high-touch time, science of the body through art. Exploring everything from the effect of consumer and genetic technologies (the most influential of all technologies to come) to the problems that parents face contending with violent electronic games, the authors' insights span science, religion, commerce, communications, art, leisure and many other areas of our daily lives. John Naisbitt and his co-authors look at consumer technologies - from cellphones to aeroplanes, from televisions to personal computers - and the impact they have on our lives through the perspectives of time and play: in an Intoxicated Zone, technology does not save our time, but fakes our time. However, Naisbitt argues that the most influential technologies in the future will not be those of the information sector - computers, the Internet, telecoms - which most of us consider to be truly revolutionary, but the genetic technologies. These emerging technologies will put evolution into human hands and will overwhelm all others in their scope and impact.