New technologies. Old fears

People are always looking for new innovations and technologies to solve problems, improve their lives, and stay ahead of the competition. People also want to satisfy their curiosity and work more efficiently.

New technology can also sometimes raise concerns or fears. When something is unknown, we often pay more attention to the risks and trust it less. Consider new technologies such as chatbots that give doctor’s advice, drones that deliver parcels and robots that help the elderly. These things are useful, but can also raise fears. Sometimes the worries are real, such as ‘Will I lose my job soon?’, and sometimes they are more extreme, such as ‘Are robots going to take over the world?’

With previous inventions, such as the steam engine, the train, electricity, computers, the internet and mobile phones, people were also afraid at first.

We call this fear of the new and unknown technophobia. The greater the promise of a new invention, the greater the fear of bad consequences. This fear is of all times, and it usually disappears once people have become accustomed to the new technology.

Technophobia is not new, but due to social media, this fear is now spreading faster. It helps to be well-informed about risks and to think carefully about use.

The future will show whether concerns about new technology were justified. In any case, things are never as bad as they seem.

Steam engines

The steam engine was invented in the UK around 1700. At first, they used wood as fuel, but as wood was scarce, they switched to coal. However, coal was expensive, so steam engines were not much cheaper than other sources of energy such as human power, animals and water power at first. It was only in the 19th century that the steam engine had improved enough to make its use profitable. From then on, people started using the steam engine in continental Europe as well.

The invention of the steam engine also led to the steam train. This travelled around 40 km per hour, which was very fast at the time. But at first, people were not so enthusiastic about this new technology. They were worried about what the high speed would do to the human body. For instance, they thought you might not be able to breathe in an open wagon because of the wind. They also believed that cows along the track would get spooked and start giving sour milk. There were even rumours that women’s wombs would fly out of their bodies at high speeds.

Fortunately, all these fears turned out to be untrue.

Electricity

In the 19th century, electricity was something new. The telegraph, a device that allowed you to communicate over long distances, was the first invention that required electricity. This provided a whole new way of communicating. Yet many people in the first half of the 19th century were not enthusiastic about electricity. Most people did not know much about it and often believed in superstition and misinformation.

One of the fears was that people in the streets would be electrocuted by the electricity cables above their heads. The pictures below show how people were afraid and even came up with a funny solution: everyone had to wear rubber suits, even the dogs and horses.

After World War I, electricity companies mainly targeted households to expand their electricity networks. Around 1920/1930, almost all Dutch households had electricity. Electricity was then mainly used for lighting, especially in the evening. People did not need electric light during the day, so power plants were not used much during the day. Companies tried to persuade housewives to buy electric appliances so that more electricity was used, and this worked well.

The first household electric appliance to be widely used in Dutch households around the 1920s was the hoover. Followed by appliances such as irons and refrigerators. These appliances made household life considerably easier and were a big step forward in electrifying households.

Yet electric appliances were not immediately popular. People sometimes had to be persuaded to use electricity because they thought they did not need it. Many people were afraid of getting an electric shock while using appliances. Especially with appliances that worked with water, such as washing machines, these fears were not unfounded, as electricity was not always safe to use in the beginning.

Internal combustion engines

At the end of the 19th century, work was under way on the automobile: a vehicle that could move forward by an engine. But a problem with the development of the automobile was that there was little interest in it. People had been using horses to get around for centuries and did not see why a carriage without horses would be necessary. They were also concerned because only one person was needed to drive the car, instead of someone AND a horse. People thought they had to pay better attention because a horse could also think and react on its own. However, a car had a brake, and a horse could sometimes startle for no reason.

The first cars looked a lot like carriages, which shows that they were still much derived from horse and carriage. People were afraid to drive a car in the beginning, just as people are sometimes afraid of self-driving cars now. People used to be afraid of having too much control without a horse, and now they are afraid of handing over control to artificial intelligence (AI).

Information technology

In the 20th century, the invention of the transistor made it possible to develop new digital devices. This led to a digital revolution and the beginning of the information age in the 1970s and 1980s. This era is known for storing and transmitting information in digital form.

When we think of information technology, we often think of computers. In the 1980s, more and more people started using computers at home. Before that, computers were mainly used at work. For workers, this was a big change: from a typewriter to a keyboard and screen. Instead of sending a letter to another department, you could now quickly send an e-mail. In the beginning, computers were not easy to use, and it took a long time to learn to work with them. But as computers made work faster and more efficient, people did see their usefulness.

Over time, computers gained a reputation for taking over people’s work, and people lost their jobs because of this new technology.

As computers became increasingly popular at home, they were still mysterious to many people. A fear of computers even arose, known as ‘computer phobia’. People were afraid to operate or touch computers for fear of breaking something. Some thought that computers would become so smart that they could think on their own and take power from humans. This created the fear that computers could replace humans in various ways.

Mobile phones

The first telephone was invented in 1860 by Johann Philip Reiss. Further versions were subsequently developed by Antoni Muecci and Alexander Graham Bell, among others. In the Netherlands, the telephone became increasingly common around 1880, and by 1913 the network was so large that the government took over.

When the telephone was new in the 19th century, many people did not understand how it was possible for sound to travel through a wire. Some were afraid that others could hear their conversation if there was a break in the wire somewhere. Others even thought the telephone could attract evil spirits or transmit diseases.

People also thought that because of the phone, no one would feel the need to have a face-to-face conversation anymore, and that it would mean the end of social contacts. But in the end, the phone actually allowed people to have more contact, especially if they lived far apart.

A hundred years later, in the 20th century, came the mobile phone. Even then, people were not immediately enthusiastic. In a movie from 1998, people say they do not see the point of being reachable all the time. There were also concerns about radiation from mobile phones and possible health consequences. Now, more than 20 years later, we can hardly imagine our lives without mobile phones, and have often become dependent on them.

Ai – a reference to ‘Ai: the expo’

Even in our time, technophobia still persists. Consider the growing fear of artificial intelligence (Ai). People are worried that Ai will take over jobs and that machines will get smarter and smarter, perhaps even smarter than humans. There are concerns that Ai could take control of important decisions, such as in healthcare or in traffic with self-driving cars. Many people are also concerned that Ai could violate privacy, as it collects and uses large amounts of data.

These fears resemble the concerns people had in the past with new technologies, such as with the introduction of the steam train or the computer. While Ai can offer many benefits, such as improving productivity and solving complex problems, it is important to find the balance between innovation and security.

The future will show how to use Ai in a way that benefits everyone, without relinquishing control.

These texts have been translated by Ai.