>When computers entered rural schools, for instance, guess who held the mouse? Upper-caste boys. Technology wasn’t an intrinsic leveler.. Of course it's not an

>When computers entered rural schools, for instance, guess who held the mouse? Upper-caste boys. Technology wasn’t an intrinsic leveler.. Of course it's not an intrinsic leveler. Who claims that? But wasn't it "technology" that made it possible for the rural school to have a computer at all? That looks like leveling to me - between urban "haves" and rural "have nots". Sure, most of us would want this leveling to happen faster - but over time each kid will get their own mouse (or whatever), and we can move on to concerns about how the brahmin kid's computer is nicer. That's progress. >It’s a world full of trained engineers — and many college dropouts — who cannot be expected to grasp human dynamics any more than political scientists understand Java code. What a ridiculous false-equivalency. Engineers live in the world and thus develop some understanding of "human dynamics" whereas non-coders do not get exposure to coding just by living their lives. >If family dinners and school lunches were painful for you, “disrupting” eating with a venture-capital-backed protein drink like Soylent can seem like liberation. This is cringe-worthy. Psychologize much? >Talented chefs don’t believe their sauteeing skills entitle them to reimagine Web browsers, but talented technologists feel entitled to reimagine cooking Because technologists cook too! Especially anyone who'd create cooking technology! Another false equivalency. Technologists: live in the world, use products, cook, clean, travel, eat, buy, ... whereas non-engineers (for the most part) do not code, or design electronics, etc. >“If you’re a concert pianist, it doesn’t mean that you have any special knowledge about how to cause social change,” Mr. Toyama told me. “And yet that’s the equivalent of the thinking that many entrepreneurs engage in.” Really? We're a bunch of idiot savants with Dunning-Kruger? Screw you Toyama. >But Mr. Toyama disagrees: “Technology — even when it’s equally distributed — isn’t a bridge, but a jack. It widens existing disparities.” Evidence please? And what if disparities are widened because everyone gets a 50% boost? Don't do it? I'm the first to agree that handing out a tablet to every kid is no panacea, and that programs where that happens are poorly planned. But naive, poorly executed attempts to introduce technology are hardly evidence of futility. Silver bullets have never tended to be as effective as holistic efforts with measurement and feedback loops. A critique of tech as silver bullet is certainly justified. A critique of it as inherently malignant is not.