Digital despair

[Neal Stephenson identifies the paradox](http://damiengwalter.com/2014/05/07/nealstephenson/) of a tech-centered society that is attracted to visions of technology failing:

> At the mass-market consumer level, we have a strange state of affairs in which people are eager to vote with their dollars, pounds and Euros for the latest tech but they flock to movies depicting a relentlessly depressing view of the future, and resist any tech deployed on a large scale, in a centralized way, such as wind turbine farms.

Previously: [The impact of the future](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=5420)