Al Qaeda

I have just finished reading the book "Al Qaeda and what it means to be modern" by John Gray. The book didn't contains that much about Al Qaeda, but was full of a lot of criticism of being modern. Gray claims that being modern involves that being modern involves believing in progress driven by technology. Also progress is moving towards a single unique fixed point. Now that all the commies are now more gainfully exployed in the Russian mafia, the fixed point is American style market economy. I do believe that technology does mostly improve things, but I doubt that we are approaching some unique single state. Society is pretty complicated, but you have to try to understand it. What else can we do? Even with modern inventions such as cheap easy jet flights to Rome, I don't see myself popping over to talk to the Pope about the future of the western world.