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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."
It's an interesting article but honestly I don't buy the "If you don't like new stuff, you're a Luddite" mentality. History is replete with technological disasters:
- Asbestos Causes cancer and other issues.
- Thalidomide Caused terrible birth defects in children ("flippers" for limbs, etc.)
- Chevrolet Corvair. "Unsafe at Any Speed" according to Ralph Nader.
- Baycol. A cholesterol lowering drug which caused rhabdomyolisis, a muscle wasting side effect.
- Fen Phen A diet drug which caused heart valve damage.
- Redux Another diet drug which caused hypertension (high blood pressure)
The list goes on and on, with lots of examples of DRUGS that the FDA approved then reversed.
Eat well, get plenty of sleep & exercise, avoid the Big Pharma MD system, consider a vegan diet and get chiropractic adjustments to help with nervous system overload as needed.
Take care,
Bob
Chiropractic Saves Lives!
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.
My work here is dung.
'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"
Yeah, nothing worse than riding on the bus or a train when, all of a sudden, whoa flying uterus!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Vatican is still againt condoms !!!!!!
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.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/
The laws of probability forbid it!
So that's where I left my uterus. Thanks!
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* I cannot recall.
* slashdort!!!!!!!!!!
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The reasons listed in this study are a lie. Electrifying homes had other reasons for scaring people than whats said here. Go read about Tesla and Edison, why are modern studies filled with such dribble? Especially American ones?
If the title would have more accurately stated "people are resistant to change" this would have not been news at all, as it is widely recognized.
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What a bunch of bullshit !!
Long ago, an author published a long screed against the evils of pens, that they made writing too easy. You didn't have to lug around heavy clay tablets, papyrus was wasted when words couldn't be edited like tablets could before they were baked. Heck, you didn't even need an oven.
After publication, his editor received several spiteful singing telegrams from greyhairs complaining that his drivel was published, as evidence was clear that writing itself was making people stupid and forgetful.
it raises an important point. not every technology is good. notice how it was found out that gsm signals are confusing and leading to eradication of honeybees.
http://inhabitat.com/its-official-cell-phones-are-killing-bees/
Read radical news here
People fear what the don't understand or can't profit from.
--edfardos
Our uteruses would fly out of our bodies as they were accelerated to that speed
Won't someone please think of the uteruses!!
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
If you want to know about sociology or psychology... talk to a lady that works for Intel.
Seriously, reading that article made me think she gets her info from Slashdot comments - "oh noes, thinks of the CHILDREN". And I bet she doesn't read the articles either.
#DeleteChrome
Have you ever noticed that many movies are made about new technologies? In the 1950s it was all about nuclear and/or space travel. Later we had stuff about bio-technology like Andromeda Strain , and Jurasic Park. In the original movie, Frankenstein was brought to life by electricity, in the origianal book it was chemistry. As computers, and internet progress, we get movies like "War Games" and "Colossues."
> "women and children and vulnerable"
Yes, the spell checker was a technological necessity, but the grammar checker, now that was morally abhorrent. Won't someone please think of the women and children and vulnerable.
War of Currents
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
... it's simple really.
I'm always amused when someone expresses shock that the general population behaves in ways that seem illogical or dumb. It's really very simple. Around 40% of students in the UK fail to achieve 5 GCSEs (for you Americans, the most basic qualification level in the UK) grades C (the most basic pass) or higher. 15->20% of students gain no qualifications at all. These people grow up. And then they read (at least those who've progressed that far) the Sun and the Daily Mail (entities which only exist to tell them what to be panicking about), and they vote. 40% of the voting population are functionally no smarter than vegetables. No wonder they make stupid decisions.
As a species, human beings aren't very smart at all.
...are unable to adapt to slashdot too. This is the way of things.
Its a panic because it represents a change. And people don't do well with change. Its moral because we can't come up with a reasoned argument not to do it, or at least to take it slowly. Making things a moral issue creates a taboo that we are not supposed to question. Or we might be on the slippery slope to having sex with animals or some such nonsense.
When I hear 'panic', I step back and weigh the pros and cons. When I hear 'moral', I start looking for a group seeking to control society to suit their own agendas.
Have gnu, will travel.
like to cause problems (oh yes I said it)
The one main thing women have brought to the workplace is rules and regulations because that seems to be the strength of women, to 'organise' and 'order' things. HR departments are all about creating a 'safe' environment where everyone's 'feelings' are cared for and looked after. The 'THINK OF THE CHILDREN' is simply a line women use to get other women in to a frenzy. You see Fathers do have an instinct to protect their young but they are not greatly concerned with other males offspring , however a women using the 'THINK OF THE CHILDREN' line will be able to get most girls from the age of 18+ in to some sort of emotional frenzy which instantly kills and ability to logically address the situation. However there is more power in the masses so a mass of emotional females screaming at the top of their lungs, over casts any reasonable attempt to have a logical discussion. People were waking up to this tactic a few years ago, however the tactics have changed, if you do not join the angry mob, you are now labelled a terrorist and against your country. Since when did blindly following become an act of terrorism.
This is just a dislike women rant, dont get me wrong, I like girls on their own, but put a girl in a group of girls, might as well just walk off and its getting worse, thanks to our whole culture of worshipping youth, we put all the power in young attractive females, all the guys chase, all the girls want to be them, and at the end we have a culture that only respects physical attributes.
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"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."
This is nothing more than a complete lack of even the most basic understanding of physics. This is why physics (and for other reasons, chemistry and biology) should be REQUIRED for every single person going through the school system.
Without a basic grasp of physics, you cannot understand the world around you. I don't mean we should be teaching them quantum electrodynamics, I mean we should be teaching them basic Newtonian mechanics, so they do not think stupid things like women's bodies will fly apart at 50 mph in a train, or that horoscopes influence their lives, or that dousing works or that homeopathy is anything but bullshit.
Bitcoin... *ducks*
Human beings fear what they do not understand.
So instead of looking like a wimp, they come up with reasons to rationalize their fear.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Republicans were the same way back in the 1800's? It's a good thing today we have our Electronic Health Records and Death Panels to weed out all the old and vulnerable women and children that may be injured at speeds in excess of 50 MPH before they become a financial burden to care for. And they said the health care reform bill was only bad.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
Won't somebody please think of the children!
it is always played out in the bodies of children and women,
This sounds like "I'm not worried for myself, but I am concerned of the effect <whatever> could have on other people". So men would transfer their fears, ignorance and paranoia onto concern for womem. Women would transfer it onto children (and presumably children would transfer it onto the family dog). I'd guess that a significant proportion of people are simply resitant to change. Not because they necessarily like living in the dark, suffering from deficiency diseases or being socially isolatedd. It's just that they've learned to cope with those conditions (and more importantly: they recognise that everyone else is no better off than they are). When change happens, it's possible that other people will get to grips with it, or exploit it's value before they do - or they are shown up to be stupid by their lack of understanding - sooner than they do, leaving them at a disadvantage.
Since they can't admit their own fears, they express them as concern for others. Presumably people whom they consider inferior (physically, or in some other way) and can therefore show their compassion and concern, while still pursuing their intention of preventing other people from gaining an advantage over themselves.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
That's the central question of moral panics over technology (transhumanism causes another type of panic entirely, so I'll leave that discussion for the birds).
People will panic over your new invention if they see it can kill people--best example is the electric chair back when public executions were much more common.
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.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The mad scientist is named Victor Frankenstein, and I don't remember him having his doctorate when he created the monster. The monster gives himself the name Adam, but he is Victor's "son" (in a way), so I guess the name Adam Frankenstein isn't too far off the mark.
Thalidomide. Asbestos. Lead paint. "More Doctors smoke Camels".
Corporate America doesn't give a damn what garbage it can unload on the public, or how safe it is, as long as it can make a profit. People are smart to be wary. Once bitten, twice shy.
Of course the Wall Street Journal doesn't give a damn either. And of course it will throw mud at the public who show the least bit hesitancy to the garbage Corporate America wants to shovel out, wondering what psychological problems they might have to want a strong, well-funded FDA and the like.
parodied here is pretty much only present in western science fiction. Eastern block (both COMECON countries and Jugoslavijan) science fiction rarely has technologically brought on disasters, unless it's by abuse of such technology , quite often intentionally. Shows quite a difference in mindset, eh?
How do they work?!
Change is being seen or spin doctored if somebody looses power. Like:
-Trains pose a economic threat to anybody who want to transport people by horse-carriages.
-electricity poses a threat to people who distribute energy in another way
-the internet poses a threat to people who possess already other media
-green energy poses a threat to everybody who invested in traditional power plants
I grew up in a heavily conservative environment. Each new piece of technology was seen as a new way for the devil to attack, signaling the arrival of the anti-christ. This included...
Credit cards: Banks want you to use credit cards because it assigns you a number, and numbering the people was something that the anti-christ did.
ATM Machines: Something about not carrying cash was evil. Not sure what that was about.
RFID: They want to implant them into your body. The resulting scar was the mark of the beast.
If they couldn't find a rational reason to explain their fear of a new technology, they blamed it on the anti-christ.
My favorite "protect the women" argument has to do with the introduction of anesthesia in the 19th Century. Use of ether or chloroform, while risky, began to receive widespread acceptance after its introduction in the 1840's, and any number of physicians and surgeons worked to perfect it. One in particular, John Snow, recognized its possibilities during childbirth. He developed techniques for cutting back on pain (analgesia) without knocking the prospective mother out completely. Queen Victoria is known to have employed him for several of her numerous deliveries.
His work was raved against in many pulpits because it was perceived to be in violation of the book of Genesis, which states "you will bring forth your children in sorrow." Fortunately, rationality in tandem with numerous upper-crust British ladies, eventually prevailed.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
Fountain pens made it easier for criminals to write their instructions to abduct women and children.
The author of the article clearly has no background in history and is just making stuff up.
In London by 1736, the streets were lit all night long.
Gas and oil lamps were common in homes by the time the electric light was introduced. Oil Lamps
had been around for 1000s of years. Then you also had these things called candles.
There was moral panic about the safety of the electric wires but that has nothing to do with the authors argument
'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."
Well, 'she' needs to provide a citation. I'm having a hard time finding one. I suspect she's just making shit up.
'If you electrify homes you will make women and children and 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' - Isn't seeing an intruder a good thing? 'Oh and children will be...' - Did you really just start a sentence in an Article with "Oh"? Oh, you did. All in all this article is clearly written in only one view point, and a negative and backwards one at that.
To say that I am scared of X is to open one's self up to argument, facts, rationality, or even to ridicule.
To say that X will frighten Y (where Y is a person or group seemingly deserving or in need of protection) makes one out to be a generous altruistic person. It also prevents any attempt at arguing the position because Y's behavior and beliefs can be whatever you want them to be in order to win the argument.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
If I'm uncomfortable with a new technology (plastic, e-waste, cell phone, packaging, condoms) I could avoid them myself. The column, which is excellent, is trying to predict when the panic over "witches brews" of technology create a stampede, legislation, or environmentalist-locust mode of panic. I am not sure I buy the common correlations Genevieve Bell postulates about space and time. People have always been more afraid of plastic packaging than paper. It's interesting when a group in society becomes irrationally panicked about a technology, and then another technology company with a commercial interest in the panic plays a role in stirring it up.
Gently reply
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.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Our uteruses would fly out of our bodies as they were accelerated to that speed
That would explain why first class was at the front of the trains
Hmmm...how is that a problem? At what point did we even begin to think that human culture should somehow be bound to incorporate novel technological application?
Of course "the rate of moral panic" is increasing along with the rate of technological innovation: such leaps and bounds do not even begin to allow a dialectic between the creators and the created object.
In the last few decades, especially, the objects that technology supplies to humanity have become less a result of an actual need, and more the result of a perceived need that has been been determined by marketing departments. To think that the process of cultural determination is a problem shows a supremely glib understanding of what makes us function as a collective whole.
Any technology advancements that can challenge religious beliefs are taboo!
If bringing someone back from cryopreservation was made possible then it would raise serious questions about the state of the human soul while the body was in stasis. Teleportation also challenges the existance of the human soul. In "Star Trek", during dematerialization, is the body considered gone, freeing the soul to pass on, and then during rematerialization does the soul relize it's mistake and comes running back?
Genetic engineering is considered playing God by many. While we might not be designing our next generation, we do check for genetic defects, and then potentially aborting when they are detected. Eventually, with in vitro fertilization, we can selectively choose the ones we like best, which is getting close to genetically engineering our kids.
Humans sometimes perceive risk wrongly.
One example from Bill Gates is when he says that things that kill many many people a few people at a time are more acceptable to politicians compared to things that kill a fraction of the number, but do it all at once and with great media coverage. Logically, the absolute number of killed should be the basis, not the distribution of the deaths or the media coverage
www.wired.com/magazine/2011/06/mf_qagates/
Another example is say a protester driving to a protest march against a nuclear reactor while 1. not wearing a seatbelt, 2. smoking a cigarette in the car and 3. calling someone on the cellphone.
Any one of those 3 activities probably has a higher chance of harming the protester in the long run, but since those risky activities are voluntary, it is perceived as low risk while anything forced or imposed from the outside is perceived as high risk and it makes them mad
I totally sympathize with the luddites. After all, those ATMs took our jobs! And I can't figure out how to use an Xbox!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
What it sounds more like is that purveyors of goods and services that would be displaced by the new technologies usually eventually realize that "but think of the women and children!" has more impact then "but think about my income stream!" when trying to motivate other people to serve your personal financial interests.
I have no idea what effects women have or have not had on the internal organization of companies or any other things you have stated, but I do agree and have seen many examples of women having no ability to logically contemplate the risks caused to children by particular actions, rules, or practices.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I remember when the state I lived in was having a referendum about daylight savings time. There were several arguments against it. One was that it flaunted "God's time" (as if the railroads were endowed by the Creator for standard time zones). The best one was that if you died during daylight savings time you would be losing an hour of your life that you would never get back.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
... is not "uteruses," it's uterus. (That's intended to be a somewhat obscure Latin joke. The plural is actually "uteri.")
Moral panic over the internet seems to stem from convetional news media, who find stories of hackers and predators on the internet rather easy sensationalism, especially on a slow news day. Indeed the moral panic is confined to people who seem to get their opinion from the 6pm news. I can't think how many (usually older) people I met who were actually genuinely affraid of going on the internet.
The traditional media's business model depends somewhat on people not using the internet, remaining fearful and insecure, it's all about the advertisers.
To this day mainstream news carries endless stories about internet and gadgets harming our productivity, children, and the moral decline of society. In just about the same breath from a news anchor you'll hear a story that was clearly sourced by lazy journalist surfing celebrity twitter feeds.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Actually the orignial sketch by Dom Joly was in an art gallery, and lead to an ongoing series of sketches in various locations.
HELLO? I'M ON A BOAT! SHOUT!