When awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest (...) when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
Carl Sagan "Science as a Candle in the Dark"
