How many gadgets do you use everyday? Cell phone? Ipod? Access cards? Heart-rate monitor? DSTV decoder? Technological development has transformed our lives and the world we live in. Technology is no longer simply used for ‘doing tasks’ but has entered into the very fabric of our lives and influenced us profoundly. For the most part, I suspect, we are blinded by the ways it subtly influences and shapes our attitudes, views and interaction with the world. But has technological advancement also led to regression in certain areas of our lives?

The end of history was proclaimed a few years ago. Not by a religious visionary but by a political economist. Francis Fukuyama argued that the Western liberal democracy and Western market economics had so comprehensively won the battle of ideas that from here on in, they would be the models for the rest of the world. Henceforth history would consist of an implementation of these triumphant systems and there would be no more big historical surprises. It sounded rather like another secular eschatology.