The Funny & Weird Ways We See New Technologies
When new technologies come along, we get some really funny and weird ideas about what they’ll do to us. A fun look at some.
The men and women on the platform moved around nervously. Some a bit agitated. A peculiar vibration hung in the air. As the train approached, one man pulled his wife back, talking to her urgently. An article in the paper had come out last night. It warned that women who took a train might have their uteruses fall out. And that bodies would melt on these fast new steam trains. Or that cows would stop producing milk if they saw trains go by.
While that may seem a bit quirky and funny today, that was one of the ways society reacted to railway trains in the late 19th century. Throughout history, we’ve had some rather odd, sometimes funny, and at other times bizarre, ways of reacting to new technologies entering our societies.
Even as far back as 370 BC, Socrates feared that writing might create “forgetfulness in learners’ souls” as it would mean people would no longer remember things. More recently, author Nicholas Carr wrote that “Google will make us stoopid.”
Why do we react this way to new technologies? If it seems we’re reacting even more to new technologies today, you’d be right to think that and there’s a very good reason why. And it rarely has anything at all to do with the technology itself. We’re a funny bunch.
In the 1700’s, as printed books became available at scale to the general public, many men thought that if women read novels they might become insane. Or too romantic. Some doctors believed fiction novel reading would end up causing bad nerves or corrupt imaginations.
Unfairly, but perhaps not too surprisingly, women have often fared the worst in terms of how society reacts to new technologies. At least in more recent times. As bicycles became more popular, men feared women would become infertile or develop “bicycle legs.”
Another reason that we react as we do to new technologies is that our modern day societies have become organized more around responding to risks. Partly an effect of algorithms that are wired into our dopamine response system and other factors from economics to politics. So we see technology like AI as an unknown. Our brains don’t like unknowns.
Some new technologies can spark moral panics, such as we have seen with the arrival of Generative AI around the morality and ethics of copyright and creativity. So it is less about the technology itself and more about power dynamics and cultural norms.
When smart speakers came onto the market, there were fears of the devices listening into all our private moments, ordering items secretly or some speakers teaching children bad manners. None of this happened, but the fears still linger.
In the 1970’s people feared that the new microwave ovens would make food radioactive or sterilize men if they stood too close to them. Urban legends of microwaved pets ran rampant as well.
In the 1980s as video games spread there was a health fear that players, especially kids, would get “Nintendo thumbs” (which kinda came true). Some feared that Tetris was actually a Soviet mind control game.
The Sony Walkman’s arrival had people thinking those using them too much would turn into “Walkman zombies.” Hmmm, maybe that did happen a bit? Some cities tried to ban them for pedestrian safety. Parents feared their kids would become anti-social music addicts. Now we’re just dopamine addicts on our phones. Which aren’t really even phones.
But even as we feared the effects of bicycles, including getting “bicycle face” with a permanent sort of muscle fixed face, the bicycle played a key role in advancing women’s rights by giving them more freedom.
We talk today about social media making people, ironically, anti-social, yet the same was said of the radio in the 1920’s. And that radio waves could influence our thoughts and book sales would plummet.
What we truly fear when it comes to new technologies is how they might change our lives, our societies and cultural elements. The smartphone disrupted the family meal and business meetings, but we have begun to reshape that disruption.
We struggle too with technologies that make physical things seem immaterial, such as eReaders replacing print books. Yet sales of eReaders have plateaued and print book sales are increasing. Many struggle with Artificial Intelligence because it can be hard to grasp, shifting our relationships with one another through new narratives.
Technologies can challenge our views on cultural identity, and some of these technologies move faster than social norms and cultural lag occurs as we try to catch up.
Culture is the the ultimate arbiter of all technologies and sometimes, even the ones we think will succeed, don’t. Google Glass, the first Augmented Reality glasses, failed because culture rejected them. Amazon’s Fire Phone from 2004 failed as well. In 2007, 3D TVs came out, but flopped.
Ever since we figured out how to turn stones into tools (or we may have taken that idea from Neanderthals), we’ve bene playing with and advancing technology. Somehow, we always figure out how to make it all work. We’re a quirky bunch. That’s what makes our species so interesting.