(quote)
"How I'd put it is that it's a good idea to understand what someone is saying before launching headlong into an attack on it. "

Excuse mre,dear sir, but not being psychic I can only work with what you yourself have written and I fail to see where I have misread you and you have yet to define whereof I have misunderstood you.

It's been my experience that it's usually the older whom have corrected the younger over not knowing the history underlying an issue. What else is one to do then when one reads a "blanket" declaration that (quote) "Laziness is the foundation of all technology, from the Stone Age to the 21st century ".

Sorry if challenging such a sweeping generalization ruffles a feather or two out of place , but you've yet to make your case answering this challenge to your sweeping generalization.

Yeah ,there's _"many clever inventions that are essentially labour-saving devices, at all levels of technology", but this is hardly the lionshare of the vast majority of technology that undergirds *industrialized* civilization.

Call me hopelessly provincial ,but I learned that from a few key authorities on that subject while at university; namely the writings of Frank Lloyd Wright , Lewis Mumford and R. Buckminster Fuller whose generation predates you as well. Throw in the late Marshal McLuhan whom went so far as to consider the act of "writing" and the "written word" as the first technology of civilization for without which there would be no civilization.

The had-writing of books is hardly "labor-saving" while printing, which replaces hand-written books , is hardly labor-saving when the effort of hand-writing is transferred to setting the type ,preparoing the inks and press ,and actually working the press
( not to mention the building, installing, and maintainance and of each press ).

The point in this example being that actual labor wasn't so much saved as much as transferred to accommodate the industrial business of far vaster amounts of print production made possible. Much the way the "information age" was supposed to *eliminate* so much paper work.

If ,as you say ,you're crying foul over being misunderstood, they pray, make further your case. It's just open and fair debate that's all.