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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."
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
http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/
The laws of probability forbid it!
Hey, long time no see..
BTW, you forgot to add the chiropracy to the list of things we found out are bad for people!
I realize that you are the resident quack-doctor-troll; but here goes:
Asbestos: Wonderful stuff for serious fireproofing/insulation applications. Just don't bloody breath it. (And, incidentally, don't let those sociopathic fuckers we call 'lobbyists' anywhere near public policy. The curious little quirk of physical geography that puts some of the major asbestos deposits in Quebec, whose always-restive local government the national government is always trying to placate, made for decades of obfuscation, stalling, and straight-out lies about the stuff's safety...)
Thalidomide: Crazy teratogenic(which is why the evil, evil, FDA didn't approve it in the US). On the other hand, as long as you aren't pregnant, it shows a great deal of promise in the treatment of Leprosy and certain cancers. Use as Directed, kids.
Obviously, not all new technologies are good, and there is always the risk that we either won't know that, or that the people who do know that will have an interest in ignoring the fact(Thanks for all the lead, Ethyl Corporation...). That doesn't mean that many of them aren't progress, though.
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."
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.
War of Currents
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
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!"
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
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.
Nope
Not one single injury
EVER
Thats not because they dont understand how the device functions; I think they grasped that part and are objecting to the whole idea.
That's not quite the entire story though.
One not-very-surprising conclusion of psychological research is that parents will do just about anything that they think will benefit their children, even if they're suicidal. Parent's love of their kids basically short-circuits the reasoning part of their brain. Love of the spouse is not quite as strong, but still very effective at short-circuiting reasoning.
Why does that matter? Because it means that if somebody wants to short-circuit the reasoning part of your brain, one way to do it is to present the threat or benefit as being to your children or spouse. That's why there's massive amounts of BS tossed around as "for the children" and "to protect women": the last thing you want a propaganda target doing is thinking carefully.
I am officially gone from
...grasped that part...
Hey now, that's not been proven in court, though they're willing to settle...