Abstract
Many ASA members share feelings of guilt associated with "technology," triggered by modern doctrinaire environmentalists and now intensified by Ken Funk in his article (PSCF 59, no. 3 [2007]: 201-11) on "technology." I have an instant cure for this mode of malaise, guaranteed to elicit viscerally from all readers the thought, "Thank God for modern technology": read, as I have, the book review of Hubbub, Filth, Noise and Stench in England, 1600-1770 by Emily Cockayne (Yale University Press, 2007) titled "Cesspool in the City" by Florence King in the American Spectator (September 2007): 66-8. In this case, we thank God for modern technology of sanitary engineering - plumbing, water supply, waste removal, and so forth. Similar joyful exclamations occur as we read of the sounds, smells, and sights of urban neighborhoods in the nineteenth century. Thus we honestly can thank God for electricity and automobiles (vs. horses).