For years, we’ve been fascinated with the common phenomenon of <a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080711/0218421649.shtml”>technology moral panics</a>, and how we see them all the age encircling fresh forms of technology. Video games destroying children’s brains. The internet leading kids into a lifetime of porn. These things go back many, many years. In the 15th century there was a <a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110119/05022912725/fifteenth-century-technopanic-about-horrors-printing-press.shtml”>technopanic about the printing press</a> (“He who ceases from zeal for writing since of printing is no fair lover of the Scriptures.”) In the 19th century, human beings were told that traveling on trains above 20mph would <a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100914/00110711000.shtml”>asphyxiate passengers</a>. A hundred years ago, <a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090612/1530595217.shtml”>movies and telephones</a> were declared evil (movies: “This fresh form of entertainment has gone far to blast maidenhood” and telephones: “Does the telephone constitute men more active or more bone idle? Does [it] break up house lifetime and the ancient practice of visiting friends?”).
<br /><br />
<a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/profile.php?u=dannyb”>DannyB</a> immediately points us to an fascinating Wall Street Journal article that <a href=”http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/07/11/women-and-children-first-technology-and-moral-panic/” target=”_blank”>delves into the subject of technopanics</a>, and how they nearly always seem to target “women and children” first. It’s the classic “for the children!” argument that we see all the age. In circumstance, the article highlights another techno moral panic we hadn’t heard of before: encircling electricity:
<blockquote><i>
If you electrify homes you will constitute women and children and vulnerable. Predators will be able to tell if they are house since the blaze will be on, and you will be able to see them. So electricity is going to constitute women vulnerable. Oh and children will be visible also and it will be predators, who seem to be lurking everywhere, who will attack.
</i></blockquote>
The article focuses on the research of Genevieve Bell, who has a theory on these kinds of technopanics, saying that they demand to have these three conditions to really bring outside the dread mongering:
<ul>
<li>It has to alter your relationship to age.</li>
<li>It has to alter your relationship to hour.</li>
<li>It has to alter your relationship to other human beings.</li>
</ul>
I’m not certain this always applies (reckon of the panics encircling video games, comic books… and <a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090628/1613445386.shtml”>chess</a> — yes, chess: “chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the intellect of valuable age that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while it affords no benefit whatever to the body”), however it does seem to apply in many cases.
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Of direction, for those of us who tend to be optimistic about fresh technology, and skeptical about the same ancient moral panics that nearly never seem to have any evidence to back them up, there’s not much to be done, other than to mark outside these historical similarities. Unfortunately, that rarely works for the fresh generation who always have something in their back pocket about why “this is different!” much though it nearly never is.<br /><br /><a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110715/11131015108/inevitability-techno-moral-panics-reckon-children.shtml”>Permalink</a> | <a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110715/11131015108/inevitability-techno-moral-panics-reckon-children.shtml#comments”>Comments</a> | <a href=”http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110715/11131015108/inevitability-techno-moral-panics-reckon-children.shtml?op=sharethis”>Email This Tale</a><br />
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