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C00002 00002		It is  often said that  the advance of  technology is  at the
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	It is  often said that  the advance of  technology is  at the
expense   of  people's   individuality.     Certainly  most   of  the
opportunities provided  by  technology for  making things  with  less
labor have involved the division of  labor and replacing the labor of
craftsmen  with the unskilled labor of  machine operators doing small
operations.  Thus technology provides societies  and individuals with
the  opportunities  to  make  certain  tradeoffs, and  societies  and
individuals have often  chosen cheapness over  craftsmanship.  In  my
opinion, most of these decisions have been  correct from the point of
view  of most  of  those directly  affected.   This  is shown  by the
migration of people  into areas  where the changes  have taken  place
from areas with the more primitive economies. 

	However,  society is  much richer  now than  it was  when the
industrial   revolution  started,   and  it   is  time  to   look  at
opportunities that may be  provided by technology for  increasing the
power and  opportunities of individuals.   In this,  we shall include
individuality in work, in self-expression, in culture, in recreation,
and in all other areas of life. 

	In the first place, many such opportunities have already been
taken. 

	The most important of these opportunities was provided by the
automobile.  In my opinion, this is the correct way to  interpret the
abandonment of public transportation by  all who could afford cars in
spite  of the  greater physical efficiency  of public transportation.
People highly value  being able to  go when they  want to go,  change
their  minds when  halfway  there, and  carry hundreds  of  pounds of
assorted goods and children.  They also value the comfort of  the car
and its privacy.  (Some social thinkers believe they should value the
possible  company of mass transportation,  but they don't).   This is
not a complete  list of the  reasons why people  prefer cars to  mass
transportation nor  does it attempt  to evaluate the strength  of the
reasons.    Anyone  who  proposes  to  change  this preference  should
understand  them  better and  should  include  his  analysis  in  the
environmental impact statement.