It was 1925, and the car was destroying Americas youth. The general effect of the automobile, wrote Princeton University Dean Howard McClenahan, was to make the present generation look lightly at the moral code, and to decrease the value of the home. With a car, the youngsters could drive anywhere on Sunday. McClenahan didnt think theyd drive to church. And if they didnt, he argued, theyd become devilish and depraved. This did not come to pass. Nor did phonographs create a marked deterioration in American music, as composer John Philip Sousa feared in 1906. Nor did the telephone break up home life and the old practice of visiting friends, as the Knights of Columbus warned in 1926. Nor did writing--a growing activity in the ancient world--create forgetfulness in the learners souls, because they will not use their memories, as Plato himself hypothesized. Some 2,400 years later, the Atlantic floated the same thesis about search engines. Its headline: Is Google Making Us Stupid? Proclamations like these should remind us that every technological revolution will spawn naysayers, who for the most part should be ignored. ============= just wow! car, phonographs, telephone, even writing! #FastCompany fastcompany/3036428/fear-and-loathing-of-silicon-valley?utm_source=facebook
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 08:14:05 +0000
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