Why is every new technology scary at first, then useful, then gets boring, and disappears once we have trusted it?
“Hello, can you hear me?” was once a natural way to begin telephone conversations. During the pandemic, when many people had to switch to online meetings for the first time, that sentence changed into a constantly repeated: “Can you see my screen?”.
We are afraid of things we don’t understand, so no wonder every new technology was once scary.
When oral culture began transitioning into a literary one, even Plato expressed genuine concern about writing and reading eroding the human capacity for storing memories.
People were once afraid that the telephone would make them deaf, underground trains would make them suffocate, and the internet was very alarming as no one could really ‘locate’ it. Change is always challenging as we fear the unknown — the thighs that remain beyond our control and understanding. However, we will be surrounded by only more technology-related fear as we live in an increasingly complex world where things are only getting harder and harder to explain.
When we don’t understand something, we can’t imagine the value it can create for us.
Once the value of new technology presents itself in practical, understandable and relatable applications, trust in technology increases.
Technology brings efficiency, but output reliability drives its mass adoption.
Once the efficiency gain is worth our risk, the fear slowly evolves into trust. With every new technology, we save time, labour or cognitive processing and begin to trust what a calculator, blender or freezer does. When technology gets consistently reliable, it can finally fold into our everyday lives and will no longer be considered “technology”.
As Danny Hills said, “Technology is all things that don’t quite work yet”.
Once it works, the excitement diminishes, and technology is not perceived as technology anymore. It just works like a coffee machine. We may not understand how they work, but we no longer consider most kitchen appliances “technology”.
Technologies once considered marvels of engineering and human ingenuity get incorporated into the background infrastructure we rely on to run our daily lives and only get noticed if they break.
Technology disappears when it loses its distinct attribute, which disappears from everyday use and moves on to join new things.
“Electric” is no longer a thing in electric kettles but excites (some of us) with scooters and most of us with electric cars. Online payments became just payments, and “online” jumped to online meetings. As most people got them, smartphones became just phones and “smart” is used to describe bigger things like smart homes, offices or cities.
Once something works, it’s no longer technology, and we can move on to being afraid of the next ‘scary’ new thing as we will always want new things.
Read this one next if you are worried that AI will take over your job. 👇
