Historic Panics Over New Technology
61K views · Dec 23, 2025 · Education
Comments · 389
@max.arna22 · 9 months ago
The more I learn about victorians, the more like us they seem. The industrial revolutions (internet vs steam power) fast fashion, all the Moral Panic of the Weeks, and this as well! We're a lot more similar than people think
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@MotherShipMedia · 9 months ago
Worth noting that the early steam engines spewed out coal smoke in absurd quantities ... it's not out of the question that train travel caused miscarriages & breathing problems, but those would be a result of the coal smoke pollution, not the speed.
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@lauren1779 · 9 months ago
m not afraid of AI, im afraid of the HUMANS that are in control of the AI and the laws around it.
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@datprawn4850 · 9 months ago
In the 1470s, Paris's scribes rioted against the introduction of the printing press in France, fearing it would replace their jobs, whereas in England at the same time, they welcomed it.<br><br>Similar to the Luddites in 1812, the opposition was not to the spinning jennies but to the wealthy who sought to abuse their power by displacing workers. Now, history is repeating itself with AI and the possible rise of the next Luddites.
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@Theturtleowl · 6 months ago (edited)
Me: <b>reads a lot of novels</b> <br>Society: Dishonour on you! DISHONOUR ON YOUR COW!
10
@kaitymarie3484 · 9 months ago (edited)
these people get made fun of, but a lot of their concerns were proven right. people did and do take compromising pictures of women in public. hidden camera recording is a real risk in hotel rooms and airbnbs. <br><br>jobs were taken in factories, or replaced skilled labor with monotonous repetition that resulted in a lower quality product. <br><br>they were wrong about train speeds causing breathing issues, but the pollution worsened air quality. car accidents are still a leading cause of death. <br><br>people adapt and overcome, but in each of these eras, I feel for the people who were left missing a time they felt was better.
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@Oceanwaves-d8l · 8 months ago (edited)
To be fair about the picture used for the thumbnail, electrical lines DID used to be a safety hazard. And it was precisely because of illustrations and the "fear mongering" that laws were changed to make them less so.<br>We keep doing this bs when looking at the past — we say "Nothing's bad about this tech <i>now,</i> so there was nothing to worry about in the past either! They were just overreacting!". This completely disregards all the hard work that has been put in by the people who cared about what was going on around them to protest and eventually put in new laws to make the technology better for us.<br>The lesson to be learned isn't that "dumb people have always feared technology for no reason" — it's that we should be caring about the new things that are going on and trying to make them as human-friendly as possible, because the corporations don't inherently care and it clearly works. People protesting for tech to be safer is the only reason we're not in the situation that the thumbnail shows.
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@lowkhay · 9 months ago
This channel is becoming one of my favorites
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@rickfromhell · 8 months ago (edited)
I think that every response to new technology is from warranted fears. People need to be concerned about new technologies, how they will be used, and what the technology means for them. People aren't just concerned they will lose their jobs to new technology, people have literally lost their jobs due to new technology. Opportunities that exist right now will not exist in 5-10 years, and that does warrant concern. As long as people are worried about something, though, they will go out of their way to learn about it, so its good that people remain skeptical of technologies that they have no choice but to prepare for, and make personal life changes to accommodate. Those that embrace new technologies are privileged enough to simply not have anything to worry about, period.
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@Emperatriz_Valentina · 8 months ago
“But are we headed in the right direction?”<br>“We don’t have a choice, we must go where history takes us”
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@youngmasterzhi · 8 months ago
The Victorians were right to be concerned about novels<br><br>Remember the Twilight fandom saga?
12
@thomassantomartino7337 · 9 months ago
I hear you. I may have watch some AI generated historical videos without knowing it. All I knew is that something seemed off with them. I dislike AI especially encroaching into Office software I use, I don’t want a computer to write it for me, I want my own voice to be heard.
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