Book excerpt: For most of the earths existence it has hosted organic life. Single cell life evolved into multicellular plants and animals. Some animals started to use simple toolsfrom otters cracking open shellfish with rocks to chimpanzees dipping into termite mounds with sticksbut another animal went farther. It used tools to create even better tools. With spears it hunted. With sewn animal hides it survived the cold. With plows it created surplus. With tablet and scribes it recorded information. These tools led to the printing press, microscope, steam engine, telephone, airplane, and computer. We call these things technology, and for a million years they have been transforming our environmentwith ever increasing speed and power, costs and benefits. Technology creates new fields of study, destroys old lines of work, and offers new ways to cure illness. Our political decisions and consumption choices rest atop technology.So how do we choose? How do we evaluate technology and technological issues to choose what is good for us, our community, and our civilization? Through simple questions, Technology Challenged reveals patterns underlying all technology, helping us to understand our creations and choose our future.Praise for Technology Challenged:Fish don't notice water and most of society doesn't think about technology. But technology grows ever more powerful, and blindly accepting or rejecting it grows ever more dangerous. The critical thinking process described by Aznar opens a door to understanding through which every citizen in our country should walk.Karl PisterChancellor EmeritusUniversity of California at Santa Cruz Technology infuses everything we do. Like a gathering storm, it has become the fastest moving, most powerful new element of our natural world. Like any force of nature, it is something we should study well, to chart a course to a better future, a course that takes care of our loved ones along the way. Only a lifelong learner can be a good captain in our technological world, and this scintillating, optimistic book will help you get your sea legs. Read Technology Challenged, consider its advice, and rejoice. This is a wondrous time to be alive.John SmartPresidentInstitute for the Study of Accelerating Change Technology Challenged is a passionate and personal voyage of discovery into today's complicated world of technology. Here educators and parents can find a simple road map to understanding technology and find a new approach to get across technologys culture and wisdom to children of all ages.Dom LindarsSenior DirectorOracle Corporation Having tracked technology on surprising pathways to its secret dumping grounds in the slums of China and India, I have witnessed both sides of the technology coin the glory as well as the horror. Our very survival as a species requires that we fully appreciate both possibilities. Anyone concerned about the life and death relationship between our planet's future and technology, should read Technology Challenged.Jim PuckettCoordinatorBasel Action Network Aznar tackles the important issue of how we, as a society, evaluate our technology. With the power to feed the world or to destroy it, technology is worth thinking about.Cathy BarlowDean, Watson School of EducationUniversity of North Carolina at Wilmington