The subject of technology and especially the Internet tends to dominate conversations and the media. It's as if somehow we've all found a new saviour for all the ills that beset society.

And those involved in the sector, from the programmer to the Internet entrepreneur, have fast graduated from gadget geek in the garage to media wunderkind with stock options. It's easy to get caught up in the wash of excitement, much of it hyped to stellar proportions by the media corporations and the stockbrokers, who are one of the prime beneficiaries of this so-called information age.

But is the Internet and technology really changing our lives as much as they -- we -- say? Like the Concorde, which tripped up on a piece of metal on the runway, will this house of wires come crashing down before it really soars? In fact I'm sort of suffering a little bit from technology overkill, the sort of glaze one gets in the mind after driving or watching television for five hours straight. Try sitting in front of a computer for seven or eight hours at a time! (Actually a lot of people are double screeners. According to a recent survey by Showtime and Paul Kagan Associates show that people in about 25 million US households log onto the Internet while watching television.) I'm willing to bet that there are a lot of people getting fed up by the way technology and the Internet have come to dominate the social milieu. My mother-in-law, whose son is about to start up one of those dot-com companies, rolls her eyes up in boredom whenever after dinner talk eventually gets around to the Internet. My eyes roll up too when I read yet again some newspaper story fawning over the Internet.

That's not to say I'm jaded about the wonders of technology or the Internet.

I'm a prime culprit when it comes to enthusiasm about our technology changing our lives. The Internet is a useful tool for many activities. After all, I racked up 100 hours on the Internet last month for my current job -- yep a soon-to-be-launched dot.com publishing company called OffshoreOn.com.

I just think a lot of people are claiming a lot of things that might not be true and we'd better be wary about getting caught up in the hype. Just talk to the people who've watched all their technology stocks plunge in the past few months.

An editorial in the August 19 edition of the Economist commented on the over- hyping of the Internet and disputed master guru Nicholas Negroponte's claims that the computer network could solve world peace. As the Economist points out, the Internet can be a wonderful tool and can do a lot, but it's also a vehicle for promoting hate.

"As new gizmos come and go, human nature seems to remain stubbornly unchanged; despite the claims of the techno-prophets, humanity cannot simply invent away its failings,'' the Economist stated. "The Internet is not the first technology to have been hailed as a panacea -- and it will certainly not be the last.'' And like the backlash that's occurring against another useful technology -- the cell phone -- there's huge popular resentment building against the Internet. The NetSlaves site (www.disobey.com/netslaves) lists e-holes, e-creeps, dot-commers, dot-communists, dot-cretins, I-worms, and netheads as some of the words being used against the Internet worker.

As an example of the backlash a recent article in Wired Magazine commented on the difficulties Internet workers are having finding housing in the San Francisco area. "Dot-commer'' has become the "dirty word du jour''.

Also going up are posters advertising fake Internet sites such as ''ShredsOfSomeonesSoulForAuction.com'', ''AnythingIFoundInMyGarageForSale.com'' and ''HairyDrunkenLactatingSpottedMonkies.com''.

One of the organisers of the poster campaign echoed many of the statements I'm sure many people, including myself, feel about the hype.

"It's not like I'm a Luddite or against any of this,'' he was quoted as stating. "What I'm against is how it's kind of created this kind of culture of people who ... I mean, like I was saying in my office one day, `Can anyone sew? Does anyone know how to, like, make a table out of wood?' It's all about this weird dot-com.'' The angst expressed reminds me of the time, eons ago, when I was leaving my shared room at a hostel on the island of Rhodes and a fellow traveller asked why I was lugging around my portable Panasonic word processor along with my gigantic backpack.

I answered that I needed it to write my articles. "What happened to writing with a pen?'' he said. The room of other travellers fell silence as if something profound had been said. I felt like the bad guy in the mix. I couldn't answer but looked at him and walked away.

I wished I'd answered: "Nothing has happened to writing with a pen. I still scribble with a pen. Some of my best friends are pens. It's just that when I want to write a lot I chose to write with a machine because it's easier.'' People are afraid that their lives will be forced into conforming to dominating technologies like the Internet and the cell phone, and that eventually we'll miss the finer things in life, like good slow conversation or a walk through the woods. Remember the backlash against television? And yes, most of us do watch too much rotten television just for the sake of tuning out of anything else. But there's a lot of good things on television.

The point is that we should be aware of those dangers of over-intrusion of technology into our lives. We should also not reject technologies because of our fears. I guess we're all in the process of learning how to find a balance in the Internet age -- a difficult feat indeed to achieve.

Tech Tattle deals with topics relating to technology. Contact Ahmed at ahmedelamin yhotmail.com or (33) 467901474.