Women And Children First: Technology And Moral Panic - Tech Europe. Intel Bell: technology pushback always begins with women and children Why is it that some technologies cause moral panic and others don’t?
Why was the introduction of electricity seen as a terrible thing, while nobody cared much about the fountain pen? According to Genevieve Bell, the director of Intel Corporation’s Interaction and Experience Research, we have had moral panic over new technology for pretty well as long as we have had technology. It is one of the constants in our culture. “I like the fact that moral panic is remarkably stable and it is always played out in the bodies of children and women,” she said. There was, she says, an initial pushback about electrifying homes in the U.S.: “If you electrify homes you will make women and children and vulnerable. “There was some wonderful stuff about [railway trains] too in the U.S., that women’s bodies were not designed to go at 50 miles an hour.
And, says Ms. The first push-back is going to be about kids “Cars? The problem, says Ms. Am I addicted to the internet? Maybe, but so what? Every so often, a new study comes out that says people are “addicted” to the internet, or to digital tools, or social media — describing their anguish when cut off from these services in the same way that smokers or alcoholics react when prevented from smoking or drinking.
The latest is research from a UK survey company that asked 1,000 respondents to go without internet access for 24 hours, and found that more than half of those surveyed were “upset.” But is this really that surprising? Surely by now it’s become obvious that internet access and all it brings with it is a core function of modern life, like the telephone or the automobile.
Talking about it in terms of “addiction” misses the point. The chief executive of the agency was quoted as saying: Online and digital technology is increasingly pervasive. This might have been an interesting insight in 1998, when consumer use of the internet was only just starting to become commonplace, and broadband connections were rare. Internet Addiction 'Disrupts Teenage Brains' As Much As Alcohol And Cocaine, Chinese Study Claims. Internet addiction disrupts nerve wiring in the brains of teenagers, a "groundbreaking" study has found.
Similar effects have been seen in the brains of people exposed to alcohol, cocaine and cannabis. The discovery shows that being hooked on a behaviour can be just as physically damaging as addiction to drugs, scientists believe. Internet addiction disorder (IAD) is a recently recognised condition characterised by out-of-control internet use. Sufferers spend unhealthy amounts of time "online" to the extent that it impairs their quality of life. Denied access to their computers, they may experience distress and withdrawal symptoms including tremors, obsessive thoughts, and involuntary typing movements of the fingers. Until now research on IAD has focused on psychological assessments. The new study, from China, used a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technique to look at its effects on brain structure.
"In addition, white matter integrity may serve as a potential new treatment target. "