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Two recent events: the death of Apple's founder Steve Jobs and the worldwide black-out of Blackberry smartphones drew everyone's attention to the fast-changing relationship between mankind and technology.

Taking part in the ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service interactive programme World Have Your Say on a completely different matter, I was drawn into an impromptu debate on this issue.

As I came out of that programme, I thought it would be good to think methodically about that relationship.

So first of all, what people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have done was akin to what Ford accomplished before them in the auto-industry - namely personalising computing and communications technology.

Before them Gates and Jobs, technology predominantly belonged to big groups of people, but not individuals. Computers, communication systems were run by collectives.

The Gates-Jobs revolution gave the technology to individuals, making them wholly responsible for running it and allowing them to truly own it on a personal level.

Paradoxically enough this holistic process played a big role in fragmentation of societies: self-equipped and self-sufficient individuals became the corner-stone of this continued trend.

The Internet has reorganised - or has attempted to reorganise - that fragmented world into a new virtual community: a virtual society.

There was a parallel process of information revolution unfolding at the same time, as the amount of available information doubled, tripled, and quadrupled over increasingly shorter periods of time.

Have we as human beings changed under all of these and many other pressures of modernity over the last 40-50 years?

Most definitely.

Let's say if a hundred years ago being 'a man of principles' was considered a virtue, nowadays adaptability and flexibility earns you more brownie points.

Reaction and wit are appreciated more than profoundness and wisdom. An autobiography of a comedian would certainly outsell any philosophical treatise.

Our attention span is ever decreasing, contemplation undoubtedly lost to multi-tasking.

So in short, the human race is changing at an ever increasing pace, egged on and transformed by its romance relationship with technology.

But yet there are plenty of things in our old arsenals which don't easily lose their value.

Take for example sayings and proverbs.

'Don't put all your eggs in one basket' - applies spot on when it comes to the recent Blackberry Messenger blackout and to our general dependency on new technology.

The common wisdom of 'Everything comes with a price-tag' or 'a double-sided coin' could help us manage our expectations and see things in their rightful context.

As for the debate itself: whether we are becoming too dependant on the technology, I suspect it's as old as the world itself.

I could imagine a lady in the Stone Age looking at the stone-knife invented by her partner and thinking: 'It's great to cut my hair with, but the kids could cut their fingers on it too...'

The same is with the ethics of technology. Technology is not either good or bad; it's ethically neutral. It's the people who use it in a particular way that makes it good or bad.

Here's an anecdote, which aptly makes the same point:

A computer server on which everyone in the office depended suddenly went down.
They tried everything but it still wouldn't work. Finally they decided to call in a high-powered computer consultant.

He arrived, looked at the computer, took out a small hammer and tapped it on the side. Instantly the computer leapt back to life.

Two days later the office manager received a bill from the consultant for $1,000.
Immediately he called the consultant and exclaimed, "One thousand dollars for fixing that computer?! You were only here five minutes! I want the bill itemized!"

The next day the new bill arrived. It read:

'Tapping computer with hammer: $1
Knowing where to tap: $999'

So with all due respect to the modern technology it's the human-being who ought to be watched out for the most.