“If science becomes all technique and technology, it quickly degenerates into man against humanity.” Stephen R Covey.

Or, as Jeff Goldblum put it in Jurassic Park II, “scientists are so busy asking if they can do something, that they forget to ask if they should.”

The 5^th Deadly Sin is ‘Science without Humanity’.

IPads. ‘Nuff said. Attractive and overpriced items that cause otherwise intelligent people to go weak at the knees for an upgrade that looks almost exactly like the one they already have but is 0.0001 grammes lighter or 0.00134 millimetres thinner but, despite all that, costs 50% more. Go figure.

Older readers will recall how information technology was going to create the paper-free office, and we would be able to spend less time doing what needed to be done, creating more freedom. Science has created magnificence in terms of IT even since then.

And we are all suffering from the tyranny that caused.

We measure everything now, because we can. Because we can measure it, we must. And because we have measured it we have discovered umpteen ways to do things wrong, while IT dictates that there is now only one correct way to do things. We are more stressed, and less free than we have ever been. And when that happens, we treat those around us either with impatience (at our own level) or with contempt (if they are ‘below’ us in the hierarchy).

Go on – tell me I’m wrong.

Stick with it – the Second Resolution will help you prevail.