The Net Delusion - Evgeny Morozov [153]
This is not to suggest that such inventions didn’t have any influence on public life or democracy. On the contrary, they often mattered far more than what their proponents could anticipate. But those effects were often antithetical to the objectives their inventors were originally pursuing. Technologies that were supposed to empower the individual strengthened the dominance of giant corporations, while technologies that were supposed to boost democratic participation produced a population of couch potatoes. Nor is this to suggest that such technologies never had the potential to improve the political culture or make governance more transparent; their potential was immense. Nevertheless, in most cases it was squandered, as the utopian claims invariably attached to those technologies confused policymakers, preventing them from taking the right steps to make good on those early promises of progress.
By touting the uniqueness of the Internet most technology gurus reveal their own historical ignorance, for the rhetoric that accompanied predictions about earlier technologies was usually every bit as sublime as today’s quasi-religious discourse about the power of the Internet. Even a cursory look at the history of technology reveals just how quickly public opinion could move from professing an uncritical admiration of certain technologies to eagerly bashing everything they stand for. But acknowledging that criticism of technology is as old as its worship should not lead policymakers to conclude that attempts to minimize the adverse effects of technology on society (and vice versa) are futile. Instead, policymakers need to acquaint themselves with the history of technology so as to judge when the overhyped claims about technology’s potential may need some more scrutiny—if only to ensure that at least half of them get realized.
And history does contain plenty of interesting lessons. The telegraph was the first technology predicted to transform the world into a global village. An 1858 editorial in New Englander proclaimed: “The telegraph binds together by a vital cord all the nations of the earth.... It is impossible that old prejudices and hostilities should longer exist, while such an instrument has been created for an exchange of thought between all the nations of the earth.” Speaking in 1868, Edward Thornton, the British ambassador to the United States, hailed the telegraph as “the nerve of international life, transmitting knowledge of events, removing causes of misunderstanding, and promoting peace and harmony throughout the world.” The Bulletin of the American Geographical and Statistical Society believed it to be an “extension of knowledge, civilization and truth” that catered to “the highest and dearest interest of the human race.” Before long the public saw the telegraph’s downside. Those who hailed its power to help find fugitive criminals soon had to concede that it could also be used to spread false alarms and used by the criminals themselves. Perhaps it was a sense of bitter disappointment that prompted the Charleston Courier to conclude, just two years after the first American telegraph lines were successfully installed, that “the sooner the [telegraph] posts are taken down the better,” while the New Orleans Commercial Times expressed its “most fervent wish that the telegraph may never approach us any nearer than it is at present.”
The brevity of the telegraph’s messages didn’t sit well with many literary