More than once I've listened to friends and acquaintances scold me about how evil technology is and how it's destroying our social culture. I was glad the see the New York Times take up the theme today. After acknowledging the argument, they take it straight on.

THEN again, this is not the first time that the appearance of home media has caused an outcry — perhaps needlessly, in hindsight.

“If you go back 200 years, there were similar complaints about technological devices, but it was books at that time,” Dr. Koepnick said. “The family room filled with different people reading books created a lot of concerns and anxiety, particularly regarding women, because all of a sudden they were on their own, their minds were drifting into areas that could no longer be controlled.”

Likewise, the emergence of television led to decades of hand-wringing over the specter of American families transformed into sitcom-addicted zombies. Dr. Koepnick also points out that those evenings of family television usually involved a struggle over the channel knob, or later, the remote.

I have to admit I've spent a few too many evenings watching the people I'm with pore over their phones or laptops and leave me craving engagement. But maybe the long term effect isn't so bad.

Even before iPads, there was evidence that Web-centric home life might not, in fact, be eating away at family unity. Barry Wellman, a professor of sociology at the University of Toronto who studies the effect of technology on social communities, said that his research supports the findings of studies like a 2009 survey of 4,000 people by a Canadian market research company indicating that people believe technology is bringing the family together, not pulling it apart, by a substantial margin.

Wish we could lay this battle aside and just get on with our lives

Hard to escape the cut spending and don't raise taxes argument we seem to hear from every corner of Washington these days and echoed in every form of media. I'm personally tired of Joh Boehner's insistence that every form of expenditure is "job-kiling." (Wish it would be productive for Democrats to respond to the mind-numbing and uncreative rhetoric the Republicans subject us to.) So I was glad to see Lori Montgomery's front-page in The Washington Post this morning. She offers the convincing argument  

The biggest culprit, by far, has been an erosion of tax revenue triggered largely by two recessions and multiple rounds of tax cuts. Together, the economy and the tax bills enacted under former president George W. Bush, and to a lesser extent by President Obama, wiped out $6.3 trillion in anticipated revenue. That’s nearly half of the $12.7 trillion swing from projected surpluses to real debt. Federal tax collections now stand at their lowest level as a percentage of the economy in 60 years.

Even my Congressman took a look at this article and called attention to it on Twitter.

I'm reminded of a story I saw on the NewsHour a few days ago, a commentary on the wedding in England and the backdrop of the austerity approach the British government is taking. Almost in passing, New York Times London Bureau Chief John Burns observed

JOHN BURNS: Well, it's true. It's true there is a lot of pain being inflicted by this austerity cut. The government has declared an across-the-board 20 percent cut in government expenditures over the last -- over the next four years. Put another way, it means rolling the British economy back five or six years.

A few years I was taken by a Tom Peters statement, "You can't shrink your way to greatness." It still rings true to me, and it seems to be the right frame for the current debate.