It is not only the clearly dangerous discoveries—distilled alcohol, tobacco, firearms, nuclear reactors—that threaten to wipe out entire populations. Even apparently beneficial inventions have unintended negative consequences. Television is a fantastic tool for increasing the range of what we can experience, but it can make us addicted to redundant information that appeals to the lowest common denominator of human interests. Every new meme—the car, the computer, the contraceptive pill, patriotism or multiculturalism—changes the way we think and act, and has a
