Stef, I’ve been having an argument with my Auntie over Christmas dinner about the monarchy today, and so in a choice between the Pope, a CEO and a President I’ll choose the latter every time, even if he’s shite, because he is at least elected… Although what with Dubya in the White House, this is an ideological stance rather than one I would like to see in practice!

I’m not suggesting that there are no threatening aspect to new technological developments. I mentioned that regarding GM foods, and the surveillance you mention is a good example too. But we are very aware of these issues. As DE says, I sense that the Pope is fishing for a political stance, and his comments are reactionary in character.

Is it not a bit of a broader attack that the Pope is making? Is he not saying that all technology has a potential downside in terms of the human spirit?

A couple of years ago, it struck me as wierd that American pilots could kiss mom and the kids bye bye in the morning, go to a fuelled up bomber, fly across the pole and bomb someone in Afghanistan and still be back in time for tea. The risk of technology divorcing us from reality has maybe been hauled up short by the land war in Iraq, but the dream of the strategists and some military scientists to make war clinical where they can, could also be what he was alluding to, could it not?

Ooh, more Saudi bashing. Warped human values? Surely that is not entirely reasonable.

Spirituality: am i the only person that takes issue with the concept of it? My compassion, my interests, my art… they are part of my flesh and blood, not some ridiculous Old/New wave notion of trying to attain some kind of collective, tangible fulfilment.

I wish the internet did carry people away from make believe gods and monsters, but like you say Rob, the internet perpetuates community. If you don’t happen to like the explicit homophobia of Christian teaching, why not take the bits you like and start a new collective over there somewhere? The inflexibility of the catholic church will be its downfall in the West.

GM foods (in response to Stef): nature in farming is long, long dead. GM crops is a way to control the mutations imparted on any one species, rather than leaving it to the historical ‘random mutations’, which for millennia have been instigated by man anyway. To say it will harm nature is 1000s of years too late.

Also, the Pope looks like Star War’s Emperor Palpatine.

I certainly disagree with the the sentiment that only organised religion feels at risk from the developments the Pope was alluding too.

Many people are scared rigid by developments in communications, particularly in the realm of surveillance technology. And you don’t have to be a Bible nut to sense that GM foods may impact negatively on a fabulously complicated system of natural balance and order.

These questions boil down to, as ever, whether you trust the morality, motivations and common sense of the people who will be wielding those new technologies. And if I had to choose between a Pope, a President or a multinational CEO I’d be pretty stuck for an answer.