Matt Ridley very sensibly rebuffs the Bill Joy like hysteria in the latest doom mongering book, 'The Final Century':

"Consider what would have happened, for instance, if we had somehow waved a magic wand and prevented the invention of agriculture. Evidence suggests that increasingly efficient hunter-gatherers would have continued their extinction of prey species - they had already devastated the fauna of Australia, the Americas and many islands - stopping only when the last tree in the last rain forest was felled. Rees admits in passing that "the most dramatic engines of current economic growth - miniaturisation and information technology - are environmentally benign", but then fails to follow this thought."

Telegraph | Arts | Prophet or pessimist?