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Technology

Maybe we've always been transported by what we can't ex-
plain. But if the world were almost destroyed and only a few
of us remained, who could reinvent the telephone, no less the
radio or the car? I'd be a man with hopes for a farm. I turn
the television on, and there's Baghdad, and there's a missile
and a rationale. I could be in a cave watching the Northern
Lights--it's all so out of my control. I watch a laser repair a
heart. I look in at my daughter before she's born. There used
to be a gulf between empiricism and faith. Now an e-mail
message arrives on my turned-off machine. Somebody who
lives in cyberspace--where my mother never roamed--could
say how. Normal: the most malleable word our century has
known. The light bulb changed the evening. The car in-
vented the motel.

- Stephen Dunn