Technology and Moral Panic

pbahra writes "Why do some technologies cause moral panic and others don't? Why was the introduction of electricity seen as a terrible thing, while nobody cared much about the fountain pen? According to Genevieve Bell, the director of Intel Corporation's Interaction and Experience Research, we have had moral panic over new technology for pretty well as long as we have had technology. It is one of the constants in our culture. '... moral panic is remarkably stable and it is always played out in the bodies of children and women,' she said. There was, she says, an initial pushback about electrifying homes in the U.S.: 'If you electrify homes you will make women and children vulnerable. Predators will be able to tell if they are home because the light will be on, and you will be able to see them. So electricity is going to make women vulnerable. Oh and children will be visible too and it will be predators, who seem to be lurking everywhere, who will attack.' 'There was some wonderful stuff about [railway trains] too in the U.S., that women's bodies were not designed to go at 50 miles an hour. Our uteruses would fly out of our bodies as they were accelerated to that speed,' she says."

Comments

In My Opinion, More So a Lack of Understanding

[eldavojohn]

I don't really believe this theory about changing relationship to time, space and other people. Personally I find it more to be about understanding. I am always cautious of things I don't understand. From computer software to mechanical things to ... well, anything at all. Those five hour energy drinks? Not for me. Probably safe. But I don't understand it so I'm not doing it. Do they change my relationship to time, space and other people? Not at all.

And I think that's where moral panic comes from. Why even call it "moral panic" when it's really just a matter of a large amount of change coming from something that's hard to understand sparking extreme caution and sometimes panic. World of Warcraft is really scary to older people who don't play it. Electricity is really scary to people who don't understand it. Hell, it'd look like magic to me if I had never encountered it before. And your knee-jerk reaction is caution.

I think simply informing people alleviates this and -- in some cases like cellular phones -- when you can't effectively communicate to the masses you will suffer from this panic.

Re:In My Opinion, More So a Lack of Understanding

[just_another_sean]

Whoa dude, troll much? You went from reading "I'm cautious about technology I don't understand yet" to racism?

Calling people teabaggers isn't going to help further the dialog in this country. You obviously have a problem with certain types of people too; namely those that don't agree with your world view. Your intolerance is as bad as these so called "teabaggers" you have shoved into a nice little box that you can deride and scorn without trying to understand where they come from.

And, me? I won't touch a five hour energy drink either but I did vote for Obama. Where do I fit into your world view?

Re:In My Opinion, More So a Lack of Understanding

[gman003]

I think simply informing people alleviates this.

The problem is that, for some people, "information" is seen as the enemy. You see this mainly in fundamentalist countries (eg. Iran) and dictatorships or generally repressive regimes (eg. North Korea), but it also shows up in many reactionary political groups. They actively reject "data" and "logic", and take pride in that. For a particularly tragic example, look at the American Tea Party - when presented with evidence that contradicts their views, they don't claim the evidence is wrong, but that evidence, logic and science are wrong.

That's why American politics will ultimately be the death of America. Modern American politics is based on taking an issue and making it an emotional rallying point. When an issue is purely a technical or logical one, it gets solved rapidly (by government standards) and easily (by government standards). But once an issue has been made into a political one, all hope of it being actually resolved is lost. Look at, for instance, abortion. Simple logical issue - do we consider a fetus a full human, or merely an extension of the mother's body? You can argue both sides, more so than you can in most issues, but with educated and rational people, you could reach some common consensus. But now that it's a political point, logic and rationale are thrown out the window - you get people vaguely gesturing at religious texts (but unable to actually point to somewhere where it specifically says anything relevant), you get people highlighting extreme cases, and ultimately something that should be a minor issue is one of the big points on every cadnidate's platform. It's gotten so bad that the laws are actually contradictory - for purposes of medical procedures, it goes one way, but for purposes of homicide it goes another. it's gotten so bad that we have people bombing each other over, essentially, a philosophical debate. All because American politicians need some banner to wave if they want to get elected.

Honestly, in the current environment here, you can't engage the public in a logical manner, can't rely on informing the public of the facts and letting them decide. If you want to get anything done, you have to proactively and preemptively make it a political emotional point. Which, ultimately, only continues the problem, but hopefully within a few generations all the emotional die-hards will have died (hard, if necessary), and things will get back to normal.

Re:In My Opinion, More So a Lack of Understanding

[ElectricTurtle]

Almost all legislators were men during the enaction of both laws, and the electorate itself was still more men than women at the time due to the momentum of social norms. Your misogynist opinion is also completely discredited by the fact that there were more women in both Congress and the electorate when Prohibition was repealed than when it was enacted.

Re:In My Opinion, More So a Lack of Understanding

[c6gunner]

The problem is that, for some people, "information" is seen as the enemy .... For a particularly tragic example, look at the American Tea Party - when presented with evidence that contradicts their views, they don't claim the evidence is wrong, but that evidence, logic and science are wrong.

I don't particularly like the tea party, but I gotta say I think you're completely out to lunch on this one. Every fringe group I've seen - from the 9/11 deniers, to the UFO nuts, to the Global Warming deniers (tea party) - ALL attempt to cloak themselves with the pretense of facts and science. Of course, they're completely wrong, and what they're doing doesn't come close to real science, but that's beside the point - I've yet to see any of these groups "claim that evidence, logic and science are wrong".

If I've missed something, please, I'd love to see some examples of your claim.

Freaks and Wackos

[Overzeetop]

There will always be somebody that gets freaked out by something they don't understand. Humans can be herded very easily with fear. Just look at the US political system.

Re:Freaks and Wackos

[AGMW]

There will always be somebody that gets freaked out by something they don't understand.

See also Evolution: Whoa ... so you're saying we're descended from Apes? The Hell You Say!"

Re:Freaks and Wackos

[hedwards]

To be fair, most of those people aren't particularly evolved.

Re:Written by an industry insider?

[PIBM]

Hey, long time no see..

BTW, you forgot to add the chiropracy to the list of things we found out are bad for people!

Re:why modded down.

[Smallpond]

Led by researcher Daniel Favre, the alarming study found that bees reacted significantly to cell phones that were placed near or in hives in call-making mode.

I think its also been shown that when cell phones are placed in moving cars in call-making mode that it leads to a significant increase in human deaths.

anything that is a network

[circletimessquare]

can be viewed as an invasion of privacy

an invasion of privacy invokes the ancient primate evolutionary panic of some other male inseminating the female you are paired with, which means you are stuck devoting all of your time and resources raising some other man's child

so yes, the battlefield is the woman's body when it comes to fear of the unknown, and especially something that is sticking tendrils into your house or creeping out over the ether and grabbing and inseminating YOUR WOMAN

AAAAAAAHHHHH

Re:Don't ya just hate it?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I've always found it (darkly) humorous that the precious, precious, Women and Children! are terribly delicate flowers whenever a technology that makes society squeamish comes up; but are magically judged fit for whatever duty is required when it is in our interest:

50MPH train ride? Clear and present danger of uterine escape! Unremitting and dubiously voluntary childbirth, with a side of pre-appliance housework, from age 15? As nature intended!

Electric lighting? Probably a paedophile lurking behind every bush, stoking their vile lusts with children's silhouettes in the newly lit windows. Coal needs mining? A child on all fours should be able to pull a loaded cart through a tunnel only a couple of feet high, think of the savings on digging costs!

Re:why modded down.

[ElectricTurtle]

That study was bullshit pseudoscience that wasn't even done with proper controls. If you look at the original Daily Mail article that your link links to, you'll see that an expert on bees notes that you can do the same damage simply opening a hive and stuffing things in it, cell phone or otherwise. You can't get a meaningful conclusion from that.

_Legitimate_ fear of disruption

[dpbsmith]

Disruption afford opportunities for opportunists, and some of them are dishonest. Balances worked out over many decades that represent some kind of rough fairness between competing interests are brushed aside in a twinkling, and the new technology creates a chance for early colonizers to make a successful power grab. The ordinary citizens understands intuitively that new technology is used against him first, then checks and balances are worked out later.

I don't think it's just misunderstanding

[Moraelin]

Actually, I don't think it's just misunderstanding. There are historical examples of people having moral panics or outrages over things that didn't involve any special maths to understand.

E.g., the funniest was one monk having a long rant against the printing press, back in Gutenberg's days. Among other things, apparently copying books by hand builds character and appreciation, according to him, so obviously this newfangled printing press will cause some generations of wimps and illiterates. Actually it was one factor that caused literacy and access to literature to go up.

I don't think he needed any special knowledge to understand what a printing press does. He just feared the change it would cause.

But an even more common factor is: follow the money. You'll find that a lot of scaremongering over new technologies can be traced to people fearing:

A. Loss of income. Remember the whole scare campaign the Edison waged against AC, just because he stood to lose sales of his DC generators that had to be placed every couple of houses. That was sales of thousands of generators he stood to lose, should people switch to AC.

The same can be seen for many other scares. E.g., TV and radio stations making scare stories about computer games? Oh gee, I wonder why that is... ;)

Even in the case of bringing electricity to homes that is quoted in TFA, remember that there was a whole industry to supply lamp oil and/or gas for lighting. A couple of electrical wires and lightbulbs would have put them out of business. And historically it did. Quick: how many whaling companies are there in the west to supply whale oil for lamps? None, eh? Well, now you know why they raised a stink and dressed it in some moral outrage BS.

B. Loss of status symbols.

Sometimes if I can get X while the Joneses can't get X, it's a symbol that I'm better than the Joneses. It can be a fur coat for the missus, or a sports car, or historically affording a well lit home or a book. Or whatever. What matters is that I have something that the Joneses can't afford. Historically we even once made a fashion thing to be deathly pale, to make a "look, I can afford to stay indoors all day, while the Joneses work in the fields" status point, and switched to it being fashionable to be tanned when most jobs moved indoors, so now the better point was "look, I can afford to go to the beach". Etc.

So, yes, expect a lot of people to oppose anything that would lower the price of something and devalue its status symbol value. If the Joneses can get X too, then my having X isn't worth any status symbol points any more.

Look at electricity and lit homes again. At one point having a well lit home was a status symbol. The poor would have at most a candle or small lamp and spend all evening clustered around it, while the rich could flaunt their having a whole mansion lit like day. The prospect that in a few years every plebeian could have the same... you can see how that would make a lot of ad hoc "moralists" raise a stink.

Only of course, they can't just come out and say, "you fucking plebs should fucking stay in the dark so I can keep bragging about affording light!!!" They had to pack it in some "it's for your own good" kind of bullshit.

Re:why modded down.

[ElectricTurtle]

I'll give you that you finally turned up your claims of additional tests. Now here's what's wrong with them. The Punjab University study (the full, original, published study, not some digested article from the mainstream news) mentions but gives no statistics for its blank group. This is highly suspicious, because it was subjected to all of the physical stress save the EM radiation of the phones. If the EM radiation were so significantly responsible, they would be shouting from the rooftops that even in the colony where they ripped shit up and dumped dead phones in, nothing significant happened. Instead, that they did a blank study is barely mentioned, and all the statistics are compared between the aggregates of the active tests with the absolute control group that had nothing done to it whatsoever. That is bad, bad science. What's the point of having a blank group if you're not going to report your findings? Because that would have undermined their bullshit, as apiologists already know that just sticking things in hives damages them.

The link I provided earlier already debunks the Favre study, so I see no need in rehashing it. The full, original, and published study is here, for those who want to assess it for the lacking elements discussed by Skepchick.

I forget who said it, some professor of a graduate program somewhere I roughly recall, but there is a fitting insight for this contrast. To paraphrase, undergraduate students tend not to question. They do research and when they find information in papers they take it as some kind of divine inspiration handed down from on high. When a person with a PhD does research and finds information in a study, they immediately pick up a hammer and start whacking to see what breaks.

If you want a true scientific perspective, you need to ask questions about what you're being told. If somebody came in here and started saying that bees are absolutely not impacted in any way by EM radiation, I would say that current studies are not conclusive, that there are flaws in their methodology that should be fixed and the studies run again before any verdict can *usefully* be reached. You want to believe that bees are detrimentally impacted because you have a green agenda. I am not arguing for or against an agenda, I am simply pointing at the flaws of these studies. When one is done that is completely transparent, properly controlled and documented included all times and statistics for all groups, then I will be satisfied.