The old cliché with the foreboding ring of inevitability is as relevant as ever if it happens to be you standing in its path.

Implicit in this concept of ineluctable progress is the sense that those unprepared or unwilling for it have no option save to step aside with little or no recourse or consolation.

But as the roaring juggernaut courses on to a brighter and faster tomorrow, surely it is worth the hesitation to consider what is lost in its wake.

Such is the case again as the 21st century’s locomotive of change, the internet, comes pulsing into the lives of some very small and sometimes sequestered neighbourhoods.

Already the community meetings have started and the feeble voices of complaint have sounded.

The NBN is coming to a neighbourhood near you.

For most, with the benefit of unseen fibre optics, this will be a godsend fuelling commerce and leisure, but to those unfortunately divided by costly distance, the blessing will appear like alien fighting machines striding in to change their landscape forever.

These NBN “wireless” towers, although only a proposal at this stage, are causing a regular series of local storms in the Ballarat region; Cardigan, Buninyong and Smeaton.

The concerns of the smaller communities where these towers will be situated are many and varied.

Some are as simple as a loss of amenity and tarnished skylines, while others have many unanswered health questions that if not scientifically substantiated are certainly the cause of genuine fear.

The reason this all seems so familiar is it is a page of history that gets repeated with tedious regularity.

Indeed the latest episode seems so much like the last that it even fails to catch the public imagination and the voices risk remaining unheard as the wheels of progress churn on. But this does not invalidate the fear or the sense of loss.

Even less does it justify precipitate speed or lip service to legitimate questioning.

Many will rightly grieve with silent resolution, but there is always the risk that a smoldering resentment will create pockets of incensed Luddites and they, as history reminds us, smashed machines.

That can’t be good for progress.