Running The Clock Backwards To Judge Technological Progress

Courtesy Techdirt  Fri, 11/13/2009 - 03:10

Kevin Donovan points us to a short but interesting essay by Steven Pinker, on technological progress .

In it, he discusses the popularity of moral panics over new technologies, and claims by folks who say that Google/text messaging/the web/email/etc are "making us stupid." He suggests a rather simple test for determining how silly those are, which includes seeing whether or not you'd exchange what you have today for what you had in the past:

I would suggest another...


 

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