ly reflected in
             advertising for computers. Ads for Apple Macs or Microsoft work hard to counter popular views
             of technology as somehow unnatural or inhuman, and therefore threatening. They often focus not
             on the scientific specifications, but on the magical promise of the technology: the computer is
             represented here as a window onto new worlds, a way of developing children's intuitive sense of
             wonder and their thirst for knowledge.
             In this respect, there are striking parallels between the new age utopianism of some
             academic writing about computers and the rhetoric of the sales pitch. What is perhaps more
             disturbing is how these arguments have been taken up by politicians and policy-makers.
             Representatives of all the main political parties now frequentl
             ...