Don't Shoot the Messenger, in a recent issue of The Economist, emphasised just how much new media have been resisted over the ages. The stimulus was Obama's recent seemingly technophobic pronouncement that “With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations—none of which I know how to work—information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment.” As the article points out, Obama "joined a long tradition of grumbling about new technologies and new forms of media.”
Apparently - and you'll never believe this - Socrates objected to the spread of writing because it would cause people to rely on written texts rather than their memory. Moving on, in 1790 Enos Hitchcock was concerned about the increasing prevalence of romantic novels, proclaiming that "The free access which many young people have to romances, novels and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth.” The article explains that "cinema was denounced as 'an evil pure and simple' in 1910; comic books were said to lead children into delinquency in 1954; rock’n’roll was accused of turning the young into 'devil worshippers' in 1956; and Hillary Clinton attacked video games for 'stealing the innocence of our children' in 2005."
If we took a bit more notice of history, then perhaps we would be less inclined to repeat its mistakes.
Add printing, books, radio and TV to the list. “anything invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it, until it’s been around for about ten years, when it gradually turns out to be alright really.
ReplyDeleteApply this to movies, TV, rock music, punk, email, word processors, computers, internet, mobile phones, social networking to work out how old you are.”
Douglas Adams
You know the real irony of Socrates' apparent lament? We only know about it because his student, Plato, wrote it down...
ReplyDeleteThere was a cartoon, probably Dilbert, that summed this up for me:
Change makes you more stupid; relatively speaking.
Well said
ReplyDeleteReminds me of a video I use sometimes when providing training on technology -
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cd7Bsp3dDo&feature=related.
Different language, but has English subtitles.
Excellent post. And here's more, retelling how some attorneys resisted getting telephones for their secretaries because they'd only talk to other secretaries and productivity would presumably plummet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCXZgcSs954&feature=player_embedded
ReplyDeleteAgreed. This is another form of the oft-expressed view that the younger generations are disrespectful and unruly. "Kids these days..." is what usually prefaces such observations.
ReplyDeleteI've learned to avoid troglodytic ramblings as insight, and try to be as open-minded about new developments as possible. After all, the only constant other than death is change.