In editing this volume of essays, Technology in Irish Literature and Culture, for the Cambridge Themes in Irish Literature and Culture series, we are pleased to accept the dual invitation delivered by series editor Ronan McDonald: in his words, ‘to choose a significant issue that animates or perplexes contemporary Irish culture, and use it as an aperture through which to examine the literature of previous eras’. Our choice of subject is technology, a subject of fundamental significance to our current condition, and central to very many of our contemporary concerns, vexations, pleasures, and opportunities.