Have you ever wished a machine a happy birthday? Consider this machine: “It weighs 6.4 ounces and consists of a few layers of circuit boards and electronic components, covered by a scan of white polycarbonate and stainless steel. It’s slightly smaller than a deck of cards. On the front is a screen smaller than a Post-it note, perched over a flattened wheel. It doesn’t have an on-off switch. If you didn’t know what it was, you might guess that it was a sleek, high priced thermostat, meant to control temperature in a high-priced condominium. A very sexy detached thermostat that feels very good when you palm it. But you almost certainly do know what it is — a portable digital music player that holds an entire library of tunes — because it is the most familiar, and certainly the most desirable, new object of the 21st century.”

Declarations of social revolutions are often overblown. After all, the technological advances of the last two centuries include everything from the harnessing of steam engines to the promise of nanotechnology. Nevertheless, the 25th anniversary of the IBM personal computer (known almost universally as the “PC”) is a landmark worthy of thoughtful consideration.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, creator of the popular Instapundit blog, thinks that Daniel Henninger is all wet when it comes to his criticisms of the blogosphere [see below]. Writing at TechCentralStation, Reynolds disagrees with Henninger’s assertion that the blogs are feeding “disinhibition” in the culture at large.

Daniel Henninger of The Wall Street Journal is looking at the explosion of Web logs (or “blogs”). His analysis is that “the world of blogs may be filling up with people who for the previous 200 millennia of human existence kept their weird thoughts more or less to themselves.”

In this age of technological marvels, we humans increasingly place our trust in the instruments and promises of technology and technological expertise. Now a movement has been started to bring technology to the underprivileged of the world in the form of $100 laptop computers.

The current issue of The Atlantic Monthly features Lori Gottlieb’s fascinating report on the rise of online dating services. In “How Do I Love Thee?,” Gottlieb traces the development of the online romance and match-making services and offers perceptive insights.

The Wall Street Journal reports that auto makers are rushing to put Web browsing technology at the reach of drivers. As the paper explains:

In an era when people can check email or browse the Web while doing everything from grocery shopping to lying on the beach, behind the wheel of a car has remained one of the few places where it just didn’t happen. Over the years, auto makers have tried to introduce computers in cars, but they never really caught on with consumers.

Now, both auto makers and car-accessory companies are making a renewed push with products designed to allow drivers to do everything they can do on a desktop PC — word processing, Internet surfing, email — while sitting in the driver’s seat. Screens can be mounted anywhere from near the dashboard to the back seat. While many models are meant to be installed in the dash and replace the radio entirely, car makers are betting more on tablet computers that aren’t as integrated into the car or on features like larger consoles, trays and Internet connections for storing and operating laptops.

The article offers details about plans and future features. While safety concerns are noted, these concerns don’t seem to put much of a damper on the auto makers’ plans.

While it may seem somewhat hypocritical to raise a question about technology on a Weblog (and especially when raised by someone who has fantasized about Internet access in the car), we must wonder if this would be good for us.

The late Jacques Ellul warned us that technology itself represents a threat to humanity, and to the Christian faith. “Technical invasion does not put new wine into old bottles,” he warned. “The old bottles are all being broken. The old civilizations collapse on contact with the new.”

What would Ellul think of surfing the Internet in a car? He would surely see it as an ironic parable of the age. Consider this statement from Ellul’s The Technological Society:

There is no longer respite for reflecting or choosing or adapting oneself, or for acting or wishing or pulling oneself together. The rule of life is: No sooner said than done. Life has become a racecourse…a succession of objective events which drag us along and lead us astray without anything affording us the possibility of standing apart, taking stock, and ceasing to act.

Soon, not even at a stop light.

I guess it had to happen. “The Simpsons” is now broadcast to the Middle East as “Al Shamshoon.” Something must be lost in the translation. The cartoon has been repackaged with Homer Simpson now identified as “Omar Shamshoon,” patriarch of the Shamshoon clan, including his wife “Mona,” son “Badr,” and genius daughter “Beesa.”