A cautionary tale from the 1990s:

With the best will in the world, and love in its heart, a progressively-minded business gave all of its employees Apple Mac laptops. This was both a sign of trust and respect, and an early attempt at truly mobile working. But laptops are fickle, and creative people are prone to save all their work locally and then accidentally leave their Mac in the pub, or to have their laptop accidentally crushed by elephants while on a location shoot in Africa. It all started going horribly wrong. Everyone felt both loved — in response to the benifience of their employer, who had gifted them such a useful tool to use as they would, and terrified — that their work depended on an unreliable, fragile piece of kit which required insanely careful care and feeding. The resulting, unarticulated, cognitive dissonance led to short tempers, much insecurity and not a little shouting. Eventually, the problem was diagnosed as The Curse of the Exploding Tamagotchi — the giving, in good faith, of technology which actually leads to nothing but frustration and dissapointment: half tamagotchi: requiring of regular care and feeding, and half hand grenade: likely to cause havoc and destruction if mis-handled.

The Curse of the Exploding Tamagotchi is not a historical curiosity. It is a repeating pattern, which is often difficult to identify in time to avert its worst ravages.