Many optimists believe that technology can transform society. Yet the truth is far more interesting, argues Tom Chatfield

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140110-technologys-greatest-myth

Lecturing in late 1968, the American sociologist Harvey Sacks addressed one of the central failures of technocratic dreams. We have always hoped, Sacks argued, that “if only we introduced some fantastic new communication machine the world will be transformed.” Instead, though, even our best and brightest devices must be accommodated within existing practices and assumptions in a “world that has whatever organisation it already has.”