The transformation of Western civilization into a planetary society of information and communication compels us to pose some philosophical and political questions about the influence of these new technologies on education. This author, a philosopher, journalist, literary critic, and also a member of the board of Les Temps Modernes, has concluded that Information Science and Internet do represent grave dangers for education, since they rather show us a way of avoiding the teacher and teaching (“how not to teach”) than help teach.

Gerald Alper is the author of eleven books including Portrait of the Artist as a Young Patient: Psychodynamic Studies of the Creative Personality, The Puppeteers: Studies of Obsessive Control, Narcissistic Giving: A Study of People Who Cheat in Relationships, and Control Games: Avoiding Intimacy on the Singles Scene. He is a psychotherapist who has been in private practice in Manhattan the past twenty years.

This work is, in the words of Dr Norman Freed, a “rich picture of an empty landscape, the depression that is to be engaged to maximally avoid it and its ramifications.” This work explores the philosophical aspects of the plague of depression found throughout the modern world.