Technology affects culture. Itās all too easy to see social media and new forms of interaction as insidious threats to our social-cultural norms. The new is often the source of
technopanic.Ā
In many cases, one may want to be sanguine about how the social & cultural effects of a new technology (particularly a new medium or distribution mechanism) are going to emerge. Effects are often complex, contradictory and play out differently in different segments.Ā
(LongishĀ counterpoint: as governments & banks finally allow for programmatic access to verified identities, firms can turn to them to digitally verify a customerās ID. Pity the finance & government sectors were so lackadaisical about offering such services for much of the past decade. GoodĀ that they have now woken up.Ā
As the late Douglas Adams observed:
Iāve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when youāre born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything thatās invented between when youāre fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after youāre thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
The BBC has a rather wonderful interactive-thingy reviewing some of the
greatest technopanics in historyĀ (including the panic about writing, printed books and fluoridation of water.)
