There seems to be a mass of cheerleaders out there who are celebrating this digital revolution, particularly in education.

I think that we live in techno-enthusiastic times. We celebrate our technologies because people are frightened by the world we've made. The economy isn't going right; there's global warming. In times like that, people imagine science and technology will be able to get it right.

In her book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, Sherry Turkle examines our proclivity for robots, smart phones and social networks, and though far from suggesting we ditch technology, she wonders if we aren't losing out on human contact in the process.