Imagine a land where people are afraid of dragons. It is a reasonable fear: dragons possess a number of qualities that make being afraid of them a very commendable response. Things like their terrible size, their ability to spout fire, or to crack boulders into splinters with their massive talons. In fact, the only terrifying quality that dragons do not possess is that of existence.

Now, the people of this land know about dragons because their leaders have warned them about them. They tell stories about cruel dragons with razor teeth and fiery breath. They recount legends of dragons hunting by night on silent wings. In short, the leaders make sure that the people believe in all the qualities of dragons, including that key quality of existence. And then they control the people — when they need to — with their fear of dragons. The people pay a dragon-slaying tax ... everyone stays indoors after dark to avoid being snatched by swooping claws ... and nobody ever strays out of bounds for fear of being eaten well and truly up.

Perhaps somebody will wonder if dragons aren’t, after all, fictitious because — despite their size — nobody seems to have actually seen one. And so it is necessary from time to time to provide evidence: a burnt tree or two, a splintered rock, the mysterious absence of a villager. The population is controlled by the dragons in its collective mind. It’s contrived superstition, and it is possible because the people do not know enough about the way the world works to know that dragons do not exist.

Now we live in this Metropolis, and the mind dragons have been replaced by technology. We too have become a population that once again does not know enough about the way the world works. What can technology do? What are its limits? Can machines foresee things other than the weather? Are there machines that can control your thoughts? Don’t underestimate the power that people who understand these things have at their disposal. I hope you can trust them.

Only this is worse, because high technology does exist — we simply don’t realise that we’ve lost track of where its capability stops and superstition takes over. Furthermore, unlike dragons, technology is not something people expect to be able to see. The circumstantial evidence is there: lots of unfathomable machinery with invisible abilities.

People who are afraid of dragons console themselves with tales of heroic dragon-slayers. Technology offers no such saviours. This is why its hold over society is invulnerable, and the superstitions it creates are more powerful than any that have gone before.

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