Can technology plan economies and destroy democracy?

ABOUT A CENTURY ago, engineers created a new sort of space: the control room. Before then, things that needed control were controlled by people on the spot. But as district heating systems, railway networks, electric grids and the like grew more complex, it began to make sense to put the controls all in one place. Dials and light bulbs brought the way the world was working into the room. Levers, stopcocks, switches and buttons sent decisions back out. By the 1960s control rooms had become a powerful icon of the modern. At Mission Control in Houston, young men in horn rimmed glasses and crewcuts sent commands to spacecraft heading for the Moon. In the space seen through television sets, travellers exploring strange new worlds did so within an iconic control room of their own: the bridge of Star Trek's USS Enterprise. A hexagonal room built in Santiago de Chile a decade later fitted right into the same philosophy--and aesthetic. It had an array of screens full of numbers and arrows. It was linked to a powerful computer. It had futuristic swivel chairs, complete with geometric buttons in the armrests to control the displays. Unlike the Johnson Space Centre and the Enterprise, it even had a small bar where occupants could serve themselves drinks after a hard day's controlling.