LONDON, England (CNN) -- The year is 2001, a serial killer is loose on the information superhighway, and no one with a mobile phone is safe.

Phil Marso says the plot of "Cell-Phone Killer Without Apparent Motive," the French author's 11th novel, grew out of his unease with the way mobile phones seem to be dictating the way people live their lives.

Marso's invisible "killer" is not a person, but a satellite that seeks and destroys mobile phone users with a zap from outer space.

The satire inspired Marso to launch France's first "International Day Without Cell Phones" in February 2000 - an event that drew little notice beyond the handful of francophone countries, such as Canada and Belgium, whose media were able to read the author's French-language press releases.

In life, Marso takes a less ballistic approach to mobile phone users than he does in print. He prefers engaging his peers in a polite debate about whether being able to get in touch with anyone, anywhere, at any time ultimately restricts our freedom.

"They make us think that a person who doesn't own a mobile phone is some sort of reprobate," he said. "But actually, the opposite is true: People who don't have cell phones are much freer than the rest."

Marso is no latter-day Luddite, as his use of the Internet to promote both his novel and his mobile-free day attests. He is simply leery of what he sees as society's habit of embracing new technology unblinkingly, without questioning whether it really makes our lives better or more efficient.

In France -- where roughly half the population of 59 million owns a mobile phone -- Marso says the love affair with cell phones has spawned a nation of citizens trapped in their own conversation bubbles, oblivious to the outside world.

"Everyone is always in a state of emergency," he says. "Living in a city can become very oppressive."

Life impairer or enhancer?

Some wonder if technological advances are more enslaving than freeing

His is anything but a voice in the wilderness.

Those who devote their lives to studying the impact of technology warn of its potential to impair the quality of life as much as enhance it.

Charles Oppenheim, a professor of information sciences at the University of Loughborough in the English Midlands, says the average office worker today spends significantly more time processing information than a decade ago -- which is has an effect on the way people work.

"The biggest danger," Oppenheim said, "is that humans aren't programmed to deal with all this. There is evidence of people's social life and health suffering because of information overload."

Others argue that the initial vision of the Internet as a pure conduit of ideas and information has been subverted by the more recent emphasis on electronic commerce.

"The Internet was not created in the beginning as a way for companies to make money," said Frank Beacham, a New York-based technology critic who has written extensively on how technology affects popular culture.

"It was a lot of companies that decided they could get wealthy on it, and it became a kind of gold rush of the '90s. That turned out to be a fool's gold rush."

Beacham says the Internet gospel preached during the 1990s fostered an impression that those who weren't "wired" -- who didn't conduct business in the electronic medium -- were somehow second-class citizens.

That perception is changing, he notes, as people begin to take a harder look at their reasons for using the Internet.

"I know people that are moving away from e-mail. ... Now they think it was more trouble or more inefficient than their old way of doing business."

A plea for more scepticism

Beacham, like Marso, insists technology itself is not the enemy. Rather, his concern is that the undisciplined use of technology could encourage clutter in people's already busy lives. He objects to the uncritical "gee whiz" tone that he says pervades much of the reporting on new technology.

"If we don't start being sceptical about (technology) being the answer to all our problems, then it will come back and haunt us."

Some worry whether there may be more subtle hazards lurking in the technology that many of us take for granted in our daily lives.

Mike O'Carroll is chairman of REVOLT, or Rural England Versus Overhead Line Transmission, a grass-roots group pressing for a more "coordinated" energy policy.

Specifically, the group is campaigning against plans to lay 50 miles of giant electric-power pylons across the British countryside, saying the project is unnecessarily costly and environmentally suspect.

O'Carroll says that in their efforts to encourage business growth, Britain's political leaders have ignored or minimised fundamental questions about safety.

"What disappoints me is that the risk-assessment industry dismisses issues until the evidence crosses a rather high threshold," he said.

For information sciences specialist Oppenheim, there is no obvious mechanism in place to force people to pause and question their thirst for new and more technology.

Before the brakes are applied, Oppenheim says, "you will need some kind of crisis, some kind of disaster in some organisation."