 A turning point in the appreciation of technology as a socio-cultural phenomenon is marked by Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872), written under the influence of the Industrial Revolution, and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859). Butler’s book gave an account of a fictional country where all machines are banned and the possession of a machine or the attempt to build one is a capital crime. The people of this country had become convinced by an argument that ongoing technical improvements are likely to lead to a ‘race’ of machines that will replace mankind as the dominant species on earth.