8 BY SIMON HARDING
T
TOO SMART FOR OUR OWN GOOD?
here’s something extremely polarising about the advent of new technology and, the bigger the leap, the greater that dissonance becomes. Some embrace the latest advances with feverish excitement; others fear the change they will bring. In the end, only time can judge the impact of innovation’s inexorable march. Take the telephone, for example. Some marvelled at the possibilities it would bring. Even Queen Victoria, who was fortunate enough to receive a personal demonstration from Alexander Graham Bell himself, was so taken by the device that she asked – albeit by letter – if she could purchase one. Presumably she saw how it would revolutionise communication across the empire. Others took the new invention with a heavy dose of scepticism and more than a degree of fear.
ACCORDING TO MULTINATIONAL COMPANY ERICSSON, SMALL POCKETS OF PEOPLE IN SWEDEN EVEN FELT PHONES WERE THE INSTRUMENT OF THE DEVIL – TO THE POINT WHERE IT BECAME DIFFICULT TO RECRUIT PEOPLE TO MANAGE THE TELEPHONE STATION.
It’s safe to say that time has judged the telephone as a device that brought mankind together, and it’s hard to imagine a world in which it didn’t exist. Alexander Graham Bell was, without doubt, a visionary. But so too, it seems, were some of his detractors. As far back as 1877 – a year after the US patent for the telephone was granted to Bell – a New York Times editorial proclaimed that, as a result of his new invention, people would soon be nothing but heaps of transparent jelly to each other. It’s difficult to be certain what was meant by that comment, but when you consider the ubiquity and indispensability of today’s smart phone, its users totally connected yet completely isolated from those around them, you could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps they had a point.
The speed at which technology has evolved the humble telephone into a full-blooded entertainment centre in little more than a decade, means it is once more polarising perceptions. Initial fears around the cancer risk of mobile phone usage are no longer as loud as they once were and, according to Victoria’s Better Health Channel, intensive international research has found no conclusive evidence that mobile phones are damaging to health in the short or long term. Instead, people are turning their attention to the amount of time they, and their children, are spending looking at their phones. A recent article in The New York Times suggests that American families are beginning to turn to coaches to help them parent their children through the minefield that is screen use today. That’s a
