Seeing technology as a threat

 I am not talented at technology. When I read the newspaper, I prefer the kind that occasionally gets ink on my fingers. But I do not think social media and other new technologies are ruining the country.

I’m always a bit surprised when newspaper and magazine editors conclude that the latest in information technology is ruinous.

Here’s James Russell Lowell, writing in 1864, on the new tech of his day:

A nation can be liable to no more insidious treachery than that of the telegraph, sending hourly its electric thrill of panic along the remotest nerves of the community, till the excited imagination makes every real danger loom heightened with its unreal double.

Yesterday’s note praised Lowell. Today, we bring him back to earth.

• Source: James Russell Lowell’s “Abraham Lincoln” has been published by Project Gutenberg:

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/906/pg906-images.html