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What would cause moral panic if invented today?
Imagine if some of the everyday things we take for granted were invented today. What are some examples that would face significant pushback due to various concerns or perceived negatives?
Some ideas might be coffee (caffeine), internal combustion engines, plastic bags, smartphones, net neutrality, photoshop, etc…
Alcohol. It has an LD50 that can be reached pretty easily, has well-known long term health effects, and is involved in many deaths each year from both immediate and chronic effects.
By comparison, LSD has an LD50 estimated to be around 100 milligrams and an effective dose somewhere around 100 micrograms. That's about 1,000x the effective dose.
And we don't actually have much record of overdoses because the distance is so high. The estimate is based on lethal doses given to mice.
There's a case report of someone who snorted a line of LSD powder thinking it was coke. They were hospitalized for a day or two but really just needed observation more than intensive medical care, and suffered no lasting effects.
Library's.
I swear people are so brainwashed from capitalism that it would be met with derision and confusion.
Like, "why would we want to pay for books for people to read for free?"
People would assume the library must be peddling propaganda, because otherwise why would they be offering books for free!?
...if you return your book a minute late, you now owe a million dollars in late fees.
I work in a library, and I feel fairly confident that it would be along the lines of: either:
"What's the catch?"
or
"So what else can this 'library' do for me?"
At least at my branch, we have a lot of disadvantaged patrons who rely on us for things like internet access, faxing/copies, and notary services. If, in this scenario where libraries are a new concept, people became aware of a new and innovative resource that could help them with problem XYZ, I guarantee that they would also be asking about problems UVW and RST. I experience this on a weekly basis; people will always ask the nearest person that they perceive to possibly have a solution for them, for assistance.
And on the other side, there will always be people who, reasonably so, assume that if it sounds to good to be true then it probably is. At least for my library, we don't have much in the way of limiting how many books a person can check out, so as I frequently have people asking me what our borrow limit is, I typically respond with "how many can you carry". This almost always surprises people, as it probably seems too ridiculous to be true, but it is.
Those are my thoughts, at least. Apologies if any of this comes across as less than coherent. It's almost 3 AM and I'm starting to drift off while typing this,
For sure. I think that's great insight on people interacting with the concept of a "library" in good faith.
I was coming at if from a "self serving person is selfish" perspective. I feel like we would have to actively steer people away from trying to monetize it.
Like "this one stop resource of knowledge is great! but why are we giving it away for free? We could really make alot of money!"
No man, thats the whole point!
I totally get that. I've seen my fair share of people outside of the library setting outright confused as to what is actually in a library these days. They are so disconnected from it, that they have trouble grasping that, no, a library is no longer just books. They cannot see the value in it, because they don't see how it would benefit them. I think that's the heart of it; humans have a tendency to dismiss that which is irrelevant to them/
On a related note, there's a whole class of young people raised with the pandemic, online influencers and content creators who are rabidly and aggressively opposed to anything that gets in the way of strict monetization of intellectual property. A failure of the previous (millennial) generation, in my humble oppinion.
Refined sugars come to mind. Easily available, incredibly cheap, highly addictive, super bad for you. I suppose it has its uses, but I see it being treated more like a medicine than an everyday food. Something you get in a pharmacy for malnutrition or anorexia, or maybe as an energetic like we do with caffeine.
If refined sugar was prohibited, people would sell it in corners.
Also, caffeine.
You'll pry my chocolate from my cold, dead hands!
I mean... ahem. Yes. It would be much like the Prohibition, I imagine.
I can see it! Especially after people experience drowsiness after consuming too much. lol
Actually we should still do that (not treat it as everyday food). That stuff is terrible and most of the cheap food is full of it (sugar, salt and fat are cheaper than seasoning). I was rather surprised to learn that even our meat contains sugar. Srsly, why do hotdogs need sugar in the meat?! The "heart healthy" soup has increased sugar too.
All foods with needlessly added sugar should be labelled "Not recommended for regular consumption" or something along those lines that points out the food isn't healthy to eat too often. You can lump in the foods with too much salt and saturated fat too. That's probably 90% of the food in a regular grocery store in the USA. Q_Q
Schools.
Think about it: the government requires you to send your child away every day to a building where they will be told how to think by strangers and graded for their performance, and you are responsible for getting them there on time, picking them up on time, making sure they do their homework, and if you neglect any of this then you can have your kids taken away from you.
As a teacher, I've always had an issue with this statement. Do some teachers abuse their position and pass their opinions off on their students? Absolutely. However, I do not think it is as widespread as many people are led to believe. In general, teachers are not teaching students how to think a specific way. We are providing them with various skills that help them learn how to think for themselves. As a history teacher, I present my students with various primary and secondary sources that show different perspectives on historic events. I leave it up to them to analyze the source and to come to a conclusion about the source. When discussing controversial topics, I present the material them with the facts of what happened. When explaining why something happened, I provide both sides of the event and what each group says about why the event happened. I let the students do the thinking and decision making on how they feel about the specific event. I, and most of my colleagues, try to be as unbiased as we can be with students.
Teachers understand that the mind of a child is very mold able and that we need to be very cautious when going over the curriculum with them. The last thing we want is to push our way of thinking onto these students, especially in today's world. We present the material as it happened and then let the students do the thinking.
To be clear, I'm absolutely not saying that's what teachers do, just how people would react if the modern school system was suddenly proposed all at once in the modern day.
In my opinion, using nuclear power in military and industrial settings.
I'd argue that both had and has a moral panic around it already lol.
I think there are concerns around both, justified and unjustified, but I don't know that I would call them a moral panic. When I think of a moral panic, I think of controversies that are more or less about enforcing certain social norms, such as today's "controversies" regarding LGBTQ content in classrooms, transgender issues, drag shows, etc. You know, the "culture wars".
The concerns and panics around nuclear weapons and power seem to me different, in that they often have environmental and geopolitical roots rather than moral ones.
This is difficult to distinguish because humans have a tendency to express any outrage in moral terms, so that is why the question is inherently broad.
The one that gets me is our willingness to put nuclear weapons on aircraft. I mean, I get it: nuclear weapons are terrifying, but I don't mean that people would freak out because we're hauling around enough firepower to end the world.
I mean that nuclear weapons are tiny, compact little packages chock-full of exotic radiochemicals and that we're strapping those to a bunch of aluminum and kerosene which have an established track record of occasional... what's the phrase... "rapid, unplanned disassembly."
Back when I was a kid NASA launched the Galileo probe which had a plutonium power source for some of its equipment. The country about lost its mind and people sought injunctions against the launch because they were afraid that, if the Space Shuttle Atlantis blew up on launch like Challenger did, that we'd scatter plutonium across Florida.
In retrospect, this may have improved Florida somewhat.
But the fact that we regularly strapped nuclear materials to planes and just tooled around with them seems like it escaped attention then and now.
This makes me think of my favorite aircraft, the F-89 Scorpion!
I love the dark absurdity of it: it was armed with unguided air-to-air rockets with a nuclear warhead!
In fairness, once you stick a nuclear warhead on it for use against an aircraft, how much guidance can you really need? "Fuck everyone in that general direction" seems adequate.
Not even just fly around with them, but have a history of actively having accidents where nukes are dropped by mistake, aircraft crash carrying them, they are left behind by accident and the like. The first source I found in that vein is HERE
I'm not so sure. The fallout from events like the bombs dropped on Japan and disasters like 3mile Island, Chernobyl & Fukushima are why people fear them. Without those, it's just a really big bomb and fancy science that produces power.
Bomb tests would likely go viral, but would anyone care about the radiation unless it harmed a lot of people? Even if we had the bombs, but no nuclear reactors until now, there would still be no experience with meltdowns so people might not even see the danger, assuming the scientists would have it contained (kind of like the gases that leaked out of that train in ohio). I'm not sure how complicated the leap is, but I wonder if computer simulations might have helped us avoid trying pressurized plants and developed a safer reactor?
Ever wonder how things would be if we had gone full in on generating our power with nuclear reactors? A lot less CO2 and pollution, likely would have started using spent fuel at some point and maybe had a near zero waste setup. We'd probably be complaining about spent fuel rather than CO2, maybe even found other uses for it.
I have an example of something that regularly causes moral panics, partially through disinformation/bad research and heresay: Social media.
At risk of being a pearl-clutching agent of panic, I can point to three examples off the top of my head:
The Momo Challenge hoax
The Blue Whale Challenge
Nyquil Chicken
One of these is not like the other in that Nyquil/Allegra chicken simply started as a shitpost, but all three carried exactly the same patterns as historic moral panics, the fear started as a "What if somebody did this," which transformed into a "Somebody might have done this" to "Police issued a warning" hitting newspapers, prompting further warning, prompting further newspaper reports, rinse, repeat. The issue is also that it is entirely likely that there has been a non-zero number of incidents caused by awareness and people being sickos. Ironically, that last sentence could also be used to feed a panic but there are some unsubstantiated claims from various countries mentioned in the Wikipedia article.
Similarly, but more good ol' "people running with leads" issue, was a recent kerfuffle about Juicejacking in which a FBI social media manager dug through the archives for something to write about, and incited a panic among people who didn't know this attack is generally not feasible.
EDIT: I forgot Tide Pods, which did, IIRC, actually culminate in a few people actually doing the "challenge."
This delayed invention idea would not actually be possible but...
Imagine a world just like today without small digital video cameras (meaning that we would only have large analog cameras). People would be used to cameras being huge shoulder mounted or at best handheld things that would clearly let others know that they could be recorded. We would still have internet conference calls but they would be audio only things.
Suddenly, the "obvious" is realized and the modern digital video camera is discovered. Notably, they are very easily created and in good resolution too. Now the cameras can easily be in your cell phone, be absolutely small, and all that fun stuff. I think the society panic over "everything has a camera and can be recording me at any time" would be a bit more pronounced than it was in normal history...
Just about every major invention since the invention of the spear has caused moral panic. People don't like change.
I dont know if it was moral panic or just panic but when Google Glass were about to be released there were a lot of people upset about the idea that they could be recorded anywhere by anyone wearing them. I think the 'panic' was justified and you dont see anyone wearing them. I definitely read quite a few "Id punch someone who wore those around me" type comments.
If they had added a little red dot when filming, like on a camcorder, I think people may have been okay with it.
Why did you put smartphones and net neutrality in that list?
Not OP, but I think there are maybe some moral-panicky elements underlying some critiques of our current era of constant connectivity powered by the internet and smartphones. Those ones that more or less boil down to "We're all just buried in our phones nowadays, lacking real connections" etc. Maybe this is less applicable to net neutrality, but definitely true for smartphones.
I agree but I think something like smartphones wouldn't cause moral panic immediately, it would have to be something you have to look back to see the negative long-term impacts.
There's constant pushback against net neutrality from all kinds of entrenched interest groups, including the democratically elected politicians of most countries. It's a system that transcends (when operating as intended) monetary interests, ideologic differences and political conflict. If it wasn't the status quo, you can bet News Corp and the Sinclair Group would be telling people to riot against it.
I find the notion that net neutrality is the status quo to be somewhat dubious if not outright false.
Some ISPs (here I'm thinking of wireless carriers) discriminate based on content type (e.g. video vs text) and rate-limit / downgrade their throughput accordingly. Such carrier-level discrimination seems to be driven by the desire to up-sell the users onto delivery "packages" or one sort or another, though the excuse offered is always network stability.
Many platforms (search and social media) discriminate against content by demoting it, rate-limiting it, or suppressing it altogether. This platform-level discrimination has largely been driven by the democratically elected politicians you've noted putting pressure on the platforms to censor dissenting view, inconvenient facts, and voices and narratives that run counter to the official, government-approved line. We've seen detailed evidence of ongoing, well-established collaborations between state actors in a variety of 'intel' and 'security' services and the moderation teams of the major platforms. All of this went into overdrive during the COVID pandemic.
Net neutrality isn't about application-level platforms, though. And the ISPs engaging in such discrimination are doing so in violation of the status quo.
And it's illegal in the EU these days, so in the EU they'd also be doing so in violation of the law!
Indeed, I suppose the status quo varies from one locale to another. I'm in the US, and the status quo is the carriers can do what they want, at least as long as they are wireless. And it would seem that there are moves afoot in the EU to make exactly such discrimination at the ISP level within the bounds of law: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/365531910/MWC-2023-Netflix-pushes-back-against-telcos-in-net-neutrality-row
I take your point about net neutrality not being about application-level platforms and suggest that while technically correct, it is merely drawing an arbitrary line that obfuscates what is underneath the same fundamental behavior: a man-in-the-middle limiting the transfer of information across his network. I am hardly alone in seeing the two issues as being fundamentally the same, and at least in my country, this is one of the most contentious (socially and legally) issues of the day. I found this to be a decent round-up of the current state of this question here: https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1561/social-media
This is a hell of a funny way for Greg Peters to qualify his company's output!
Your arguments aren't new to me, but I've always thought it unproductive to mix apples and oranges. As I've always understood it, net neutrality refers to the notion that a network in the internet shouldn't discriminate against traffic crossing it (such as by prioritizing, deprioritizing or blocking it) based on its original source, such as for example ISPs discriminating against traffic if it originated in a server owned by Netflix. The network was already paid for carrying the traffic through its peering contract (with adjacent networks) and/or end-user contracts.
Net neutrality should be protected in this strictest form, since is a fundamental and essential principle for keeping the internet a decentralized and open platform in which services and companies can thrive regardless of where they are hosted or who they belong to. Otherwise it would quickly devolve into an oligopoly at best, since smaller websites (like tildes) would have to pay protection fees to a hundred different ISPs or risk getting deprioritized or blocked.
In Portugal, the kind of traffic qualification mobile ISPs used to engage in that favored certain established companies and services ("zero rating") was originally considered to fall in a loophole of EU net neutrality regulations. However, it was eventually deemed otherwise, and the practice was outlawed. It no longer exists!
I understand this is still a problem in the US and you definitely need (and should fight for) stronger legal protections for net neutrality. I still consider it the status quo, however, because no only it's the way the internet originally worked, it's the only way it can function in a way that's recognizable as what we think of as "the internet".
As for the spat described in your article I must of course side with Netflix. It's nothing new, though. Commercial ISPs will keep trying their best to undermine net neutrality because they were for the most part founded during a time when they could get away with providing their customers with far less bandwidth than customers paid for, since online services were more lightweight.
They are issues that can have similar effects, and platform centralization and control is definitely important and sensitive, but I find that people who don't understand these issues very well can get very confused if you equate both. It remains a different problem with its own set of associated challenges that must be addressed separately.
I had thought recently that if the chemical they add to natural gas to give it a distinct smell was added today people would scream conspiracy.
MRNA vaccines seem to me a clear and recent example. One might even say the moral panic is ongoing.
It's far too easy to accidentally overdose on paracetamol if you're in pain but not counting your tablets.
The Guillotine - Consider this is a device with the purpose of beheading people, this would not go down well as a humane way to kill someone.
People are wont to be up in arms about anything that shifts status quo. The idea of an invention causing "moral panic" already assumes that people are comfortable and established pre-invention.
An "UMBRELLA" that... keeps you from getting wet when it rains?? How will you receive the nourishing cleanse of the sky?
"CHAIR"? You mean people will just lean back when they sit? How rude! Also, with these so-called "CHAIRBACKS" how will you see our village rank tattoos? Diabolical, I daresay.
We're not entirely convinced that a "RAKE" will be welcome here. Our children look forward to soil sifting time and even moreso the annual Sifting Championship, for which we take particular pride in being consistent Top 5 in the Nationals. It also keeps the hands of our elderly agile and prevents dementia due to the recently discover prevalence of Type III SSRA neuro-beneficial microbacterial flora interacting with the BQ-axion transport pathways.