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IN The Blind Giant, Nick Harkaway first imagines two extreme futures: a dystopia in which we rot in front of our screens and a fairy tale in which everything is amplified by the glory of technology. He then explodes both, arguing that human nature renders even the shiniest technology a mere tool.

The real question is which aspects of human nature we should use our tools to amplify. He argues that the price of technological utopia for some is the exploitation of others – ruined states where the building blocks of utopia are mined on the cheap. Put bluntly, smartphone parts are the new blood diamonds.

If shiny baubles are valued more highly than the lives of the people who mine them, what hope do we have of looking honestly at the materials that make up our sacred tablets?

From that depressing question, Harkaway shifts to the promise of technology: amplifying the best parts of ourselves. His final point – that technology, used in the right way, makes us more who we are than we have ever been – is both a promise and a threat.