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Consider, too, fashions in personal computing. IT companies now encourage us to store all our data in what is euphemistically known as the “cloud,” rather than on our own desktop computers, arguing that the company will constantly update the storage formats for our data, thereby allowing us to avoid the inevitable problem of obsolescence.

Many computer users go along with this promise, because cloud storage is cheap, convenient and seemingly infinite. But this means that the company has access to our confidential information. Moreover, there is no guarantee that it will keep its side of the deal. It may get taken over, or it may go bankrupt. Moreover, if we stop our payments – or, for that matter, die – the company may render our data inaccessible, or even delete it. Perhaps “cloud computing” should be renamed “cloud-cuckoo computing.”

On the whole, advances in technology are dehumanizing. They tend to replace face-to-face contact with human-machine contact, as in social media and online purchasing. We have all seen cafes with “a whole table of ‘friends’ using their mobiles for talking, texting or emailing other people,” observes Townsend. As I sat down to write this, Amazon proudly announced on Twitter and YouTube its first test in Cambridge, England of a delivery by drone as follows: “First Prime Air delivery. Fully autonomous – no human pilot. 13 minutes – click to delivery.”

The book is stronger on analysis of technology’s “dark side” than on enlightened and feasible proposals for change. But in the final chapter, Radical suggestions and a grain of hope, Townsend suggests an intriguing reform of the democratic process. In the British House of Commons, rather than each political party seated together, facing the opposition, why not use technology to reduce tribalism?