A vigil was held after the controversial death of a Gambian refugee in Venice. Photo / Getty Images
Not all progress is good.
Think of the mobile phone, through which many people live their entire lives, not believing they exist unless they take constant selfies, filming whatever they see.
There's a gap between reality and illusion here and it's not magical. It's a pathway to, at best, vanity and, at worst, callousness.
Recently, a young Gambian refugee drowned in Venice's Grand Canal watched by tourists who took out their phones to record from nearby boats.
Nobody jumped in to save him, although some people threw life rings that he seemed to make no attempt to reach. Possibly he intended to die.
Comments onlookers made were disturbing: "He is stupid. He wants to die", "Go on, go back home", and "Let him die at this point", were possibly the least offensive.
One report said they were quiet when the man's lifeless body was dragged from the water. Could they have realised that some things, like death and suffering, exist in the real world?
No wonder it seemed best to the drowned man not to live in a world where people are capable of such casual cruelty.
The report reminded me of the teenagers here who think it's amusing to organise fights and film them on their smartphones or encourage girls to have degrading images taken of them which are then broadcast for the lols.
Kids kill themselves over such things, but it doesn't stop them happening.
Not so long ago the same mindset had tortured bears "dancing" for public amusement, bare-knuckle boxing with no rules, and organised dog fights.
We'd put such savage pastimes behind us in the civilised world until it became possible to organise them again online and spread the enjoyment with other sadists.
It's quick and easy. So easy that we risk forgetting the ties that bind us into a world fit to live in: kindness, consideration, empathy, tolerance, trust.
Somehow that leads, as all roads now do, to Donald Trump, who is now able to make people's lives miserable by banning them, even after vetting, from entering the US.
While Americans shoot each other, sometimes in mass events, they don't appreciate people from other countries doing it on their turf.
Meanwhile Mexicans will need to pole vault over Trump's "beautiful" wall.
And Americans will pick up the low-paid work that desperate Mexicans did and there'll be a round of applause all over the country. What will he do next? And what will we do next?
I hope that if we visit the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin we won't take selfies in front of exhibits of bodies from concentration camps.
A German-based satirist set up a website shaming such selfie-takers, who have apologised for their insensitivity.
Which reminds me of Trump filmed at a recent prayer meeting grinning and giving the thumbs-up to onlookers while the boring bit dragged on without him.
But we've got nothing to boast about in our sale of this country to the rich nationals of other countries in their hunt for bolt holes.
Peter Thiel, a Trump supporter, has become a citizen here on the basis, it seems, that he's a billionaire.
He has given money to the Canterbury earthquake fund, and his company has invested in Xero, but his money helped him buy land by Lake Wanaka that few New Zealanders could afford.
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg chose Hawaii as his bolt hole, and recently ran foul of native Hawaiians for wanting to force an auction to enable him to buy out their holdings within his estate there.
Hawaiians have been alienated from their land, so small holdings are important to them.
When he learned about their position, Zuckerberg dropped his lawsuits, admitting he'd made a mistake.
Hopefully he's set an example to others who want to skulk in the Pacific while Trump stuffs up the Northern Hemisphere where climate change is not happening and Isis can be destroyed by lunchtime.
- Rosemary McLeod is a journalist and author.