Future Shock, for America?

TCS: Future Shock, for America? James Pinkerton reviews "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" and "Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence", while commenting on whether American and Japanese cultures are shunning or embracing the current rapid pace of changes in technology. Good 2nd hand quote:

"Ghost" director Oshii is on a mission to instruct. In an interview with The Washington Post, he observed, "People are very different from animals. We don't accept our original bodies. Humans wear clothes, have earrings and tattoos, do cosmetic surgery, take vitamins. If they are sick, they get organ transplants. And now we have radios, telephones, microphones, watches, computers, microchips outside the body now, but soon we will utilize these machines inside our bodies and then we will be part cyborg. This is inevitable. The process has already begun."

Meanwhile people in America find outsourcing scary, only the latest demon of progress. For more on views of the future and progress, I highly suggest Virginia Postrel's book, "The Future and its Enemies."