Technophobia

Here's a bit from an interesting article in Slate by Vaughan Bell relating the history of fears about new technology and its pernicious effects:

Similar concerns arose in the 18thcentury, when newspapers became more common. The French statesman Malesherbes railed against the fashion for getting news from the printed page, arguing that it socially isolated readers and detracted from the spiritually uplifting group practice of getting news from the pulpit. A hundred years later, as literacy became essential and schools were widely introduced, the curmudgeons turned against education for being unnatural and a risk to mental health. An 1883 article in the weekly medical journal the Sanitarian argued that schools "exhaust the children's brains and nervous systems with complex and multiple studies, and ruin their bodies by protracted imprisonment." Meanwhile,excessive study was considered a leading cause of madness by the medical community.
When radio arrived, we discovered yet another scourge of the young: The wireless was accused of distracting children from reading and diminishing performance in school, both of which were now considered to be appropriate and wholesome. In 1936, the music magazine the Gramophone reported that children had "developed the habit of dividing attention between the humdrum preparation of their school assignments and the compelling excitement of the loudspeaker" and described how the radio programs were disturbing the balance of their excitable minds. The television caused widespread concern as well: Media historian Ellen Wartella has noted how "opponents voiced concerns about how television might hurt radio, conversation, reading, and the patterns of family living and result in the further vulgarization of American culture."

By the end of the 20th century, personal computers had entered our homes, the Internet was a global phenomenon, and almost identical worries were widely broadcast through chilling headlines: CNN reported that "Email 'hurts IQ more than pot'," the Telegraph that "Twitter and Facebook could harm moral values" and the "Facebook and MySpace generation 'cannot form relationships'," and the Daily Mail ran a piece on "How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer." Not a single shred of evidence underlies these stories, but they make headlines across the world because they echo our recurrent fears about new technology.

These fears have also appeared in feature articles for more serious publications: Nicolas Carr's influential article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" for the Atlanticsuggested the Internet was sapping our attention and stunting our reasoning; the Times of London article "Warning: brain overload" said digital technology is damaging our ability to empathize; and a piece in the New York Times titled "The Lure of Data: Is It Addictive?" raised the question of whether technology could be causing attention deficit disorder. All of these pieces have one thing in common—they mention not one study on how digital technology is affecting the mind and brain. They tell anecdotes about people who believe they can no longer concentrate, talk to scientists doing peripherally related work, and that's it.

...

The writer Douglas Adams observed how technology that existed when we were born seems normal, anything that is developed before we turn 35 is exciting, and whatever comes after that is treated with suspicion. This is not to say all media technologies are harmless, and there is an important debate to be had about how new developments affect our bodies and minds. But history has shown that we rarely consider these effects in anything except the most superficial terms because our suspicions get the better of us. In retrospect, the debates about whether schooling dulls the brain or whether newspapers damage the fabric of society seem peculiar, but our children will undoubtedly feel the same about the technology scares we entertain now. It won't be long until they start the cycle anew.

Read the original article to get all the embedded links and get the bits I left out.

The lessons to be learned:

• There is nothing new under the sun. (This is an operating premise of mine to help keep me from being swept up in some new mania. It is good as a first approximation of truth.)


• Be suspicious of dramatic new claims, e.g. scientists discover corn syrup 'linked to pancreatic cancer', scientists discover corn is a 'miracle food' with critical nutrients, scientists discover stunning weight loss on a 'corn only' diet, new research shows that 'having corn more than four times a week' is linked with heart disease, etc. These are usually statistically meaningless "results" and they weren't conducted using a double-bind methodology to prevent research beliefs from contaminating the results.


• If something is too bad to believe, don't believe it. This is the reverse of the old maxim: if something is too good to believe, don't believe it. In short, there is wisdom in old 'folk wisdom'.


• Be leery of any "research" which is data free. A real experiment uses enough data to be statistically significant and it frames the experiment in a way that allows alternative hypotheses to be tested. And, most importantly, it is published with data that quantifies the effect and identifies the extent and limits of the effect.


• Anecdotes are just that: stories. Stories are for bedtime. They aren't science. Science requires the scientific methodology, appropriate theory to frame the question, rigorous experiment, publishing of results, review by peers, and the full disclosure of the details of the experiment. (Translation: you aren't going to find 'real science' in a media report.)