I spent the last quarter of 2015 in the tech capital of the world, San Francisco. There were apps for everything and wearables for everyone. As a self-proclaimed early adopter, I was excited to be among my people. But even in this forward-thinking, future-facing bastion of the tech elite, a familiar concern prevailed: we have too much technology in our lives.
This is something we’ve probably all felt to some degree and something I’ve reflected on before myself. But seeing it in San Francisco not only seemed hypocritical (the salesmen at my SaaS company would lament the smartphones that they used to sell people software) but also put it in a new historical context. Technology has been driving growth in the Bay Area since they came up with the microchip in 1974. Has even the birthplace of the personal computer always feared technology?
Were people lamenting the internet in the 80s? Or television in the 30s? How consistent has our disquietude with technology been throughout history? Chronicling the depths of this uneasiness could help us answer the most important question: is technology fundamentally altering how we interact as a species? In other words, is tech affecting human nature?
(Note: For the sake of this post, I’m referring only to people’s philosophical, psychological, and social concerns with technology – not environmental or violent. At this point I hope most would agree that new technology that does environmental or physical damage is not justifiable).
Smartphones (2010s)
Today, as I noted above, public enemy number one is smartphones. Our primary concern is that they take us “out of the moment”, enticing us to prioritize our attention to the screen instead of on those around us. This sentiment was immortalized in the 2014 YouTube video “Look Up”. Smartphones also intensified three other recent phenomena: email, social media, and dating apps. The cultural ramifications of all three have been heavily debated since their inception. Email was said to “hurt IQ more than pot”, Facebook “makes people feel worse about themselves”, and dating apps, of course, have caused “the end of dating.” I’ll revisit these issues after exploring reactions to previous technological advances.
Computers (1980s)
Today’s issues, expressed largely by Millennials and Generation X, can be described as a kind of vague existential ennui. But in the 1980s, Baby Boomers reacted to the advent of the personal computer far more acutely. One author described their “computerphobia” as follows:
“These can take such forms as fear of physically touching the computer or of damaging it and what’s inside it, a reluctance to read or talk about computers, feeling threatened by those who do know something about them, feeling that you can be replaced by a machine, become a slave to it, or feeling aggressive towards computers.”
Baby Boomers weren’t just moody about computers – they full-on hated them.
This hatred stemmed primarily from the fact that these machines weren’t understood by the masses. There was a widespread fear that computers would take millions of people’s jobs. Seemed reasonable at the time, but history has shown that computers have created more jobs than they’ve stolen.
Television (1950s)
Many today consider it technology’s Original Sin, but society’s relationship with television has metamorphosed over time. After arriving in-market in the 1920s, the Golden Age popularized it as our grandparents’ family staple in the 1950s. Not long after that, perception began to turn: although still ubiquitous, TV came to be seen as a Boob Tube that could rot kids’ brains. Academia even blamed it for the “vulgarization of American culture.” But today, TV has seen a cultural renaissance as a widely-accepted (and even celebrated) digital medium.
Earlier in history
As we look further back in time, society’s concerns with technology carry the same overtones as today but sound far sillier:
- 1909: Fremont Rider considers the newly popular telephone to be a device with occult hazards, blurring the “line between spirit and matter.”
- 1889: U.S President Benjamin Harrison refused to turn on the light switches in the White House for fear of electrocution.
- ~1750: French statesman Malesherbes feared that the new practice of getting news from a newspaper instead of pulpit announcements would isolate people and reduce their spiritual fibre.
- ~1500: Acclaimed Swiss scientist Conrad Gessner was concerned with the overload of data and excessive access to information that the printing press would cause.
- ~370 BC: Socrates famously advocated against writing itself because it would “create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories.”
Only today are we able to see how foolish these look. And most would agree that writing, printing, and electricity have all made society better – and left human nature unchanged.
What does this all mean?
The TV generation also had their own “Look Up”: Charlie Chaplin’s speech in The Great Dictator. This has made the viral rounds a couple times now because his words so readily reflect our feelings today. Although ostensibly about fascism, it is encased in a familiar cry against the technology that enslaves us:
“Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. […] Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men—machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men!”
It’s easy to see how this resonates today. Those who share the video, however, miss the irony of sharing it in the present day. We are feeling the exact same sentiments as they did 75 years ago. But the technology that spurred his emotion, and even the rate of its change, has changed dramatically. What hasn’t changed? Our nature to fear the misunderstood.
I will reiterate this point, and I think that historians and artists alike would agree: technology has changed drastically over the course of history, but human nature has not.
So, to return to our concerns with present-today technology: there are two possibilities:
- Smartphones, social media, and other modern-day inventions are going to have a more profound effect on society’s psyche than the printing press, TV, and telephone combined.
- The current technological advances will not fundamentally affect human nature.
I will grant that option 1 is a real possibility. However, consider the reason that all the other prognostications I listed above seem so silly now: by definition, it is impossible for us to study the effect of emerging technology scientifically. Good science requires a good sample size and time to study it. For example, we didn’t realize smoking caused cancer until 85 years after its popularization – not coincidentally the duration of a full adult life. By the time enough time has passed to properly study any emerging technology, it has already emerged.
So when anyone (including writers, scientists, your friend with a flip phone) makes a claim about the effect of new technology on our lives, they are relying on anecdotal evidence. And that’s heavily biased by their fractional life. Douglas Adams has a great quote:
“Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
Everyone’s anecdotes about technology’s effect on their lives are influenced by this age bias. My 10-year-old brother thinks technology is normal and my grandma thinks it’s changing people for the worse. It has been that way for all of human history.
This means when it comes to the effects of changing technology, no one really knows what they’re talking about. So everything is probably going to be okay.