Pessimists Archive Newsletter

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📰 🔍 Pessimists Archive Newsletter

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📰 🔍 Pessimists Archive Newsletter

Pessimists Archive
Aug 29, 2022
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📰 🔍 Pessimists Archive Newsletter

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👨🏻‍⚕️ Hypochondria of Modernity

In 1906 the St-Louis Post Dispatch ran a full page editorial titled ‘Cauffeur’s Wrist, Typewriter Back and Telephone Ear.’ The piece began by listing “ailments caused by new inventions” to illustrate “How Progress Is Adding to Our Physical Burdens.” This hypochondria born of technology change and modernity feels very familiar.

We did a breakdown of the article here:

Pessimists Archive Newsletter
The Hypochondria of Modernity
THE EARLY 1900s WAS A TIME OF GREAT TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS, the world was changing rapidly thanks to the newly popular safety bicycle, the automobile, the growth of telephone ownership among many other things. All this technological and resulting cultural changed begged a question…
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7 months ago · 1 like · 1 comment · Pessimists Archive

🧠 The Psychology of Technophobia

A very interesting study on how people are more likely to be cyclical about technology if it was invented after they were born confirms what we have long believed and what many examples we share demonstrates.

Twitter avatar for @Neuro_Skeptic
Neuroskeptic 🇺🇦 @Neuro_Skeptic
Invented before I was 10: old and boring Invented when I was 10-25: can't live without Invented when I was 25+: ruining world pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36001890/
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9:14 AM ∙ Aug 25, 2022
531Likes128Retweets

It is the scientific version of Douglas Adams famous quip:

“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”


🎙 Luddite Populism

Founder and Curator of Pessimists Archive Louis Anslow did an interview with Robert Tracinski of the Symposium Newsletter about the project and ‘luddite populism"

Symposium
Luddite Populism
Listen now (37 min) | Rob Tracinski talks to Louis Anslow, creator and curator of the Pessimist’s Archive, which chronicles the long history of techno-pessimism, about the “science folklore” of the “Black Mirror fallacy” and the scarcity bias that induces a false nostalgia for the past…
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7 months ago · Robert Tracinski

🔎 📰 New Archival Finds

Some fun new finds from the archives made since our last newsletter went out.

💄 Beauty filters are treated as a strange new phenomena born of modern beauty standards, but in 1903 analog beauty filters were a thing.

Twitter avatar for @PessimistsArc
Pessimists Archive @PessimistsArc
1903 also had beauty filters
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1:50 PM ∙ Aug 21, 2022
87Likes15Retweets

💡👁 In the early days of electric lighting, some worried what it was doing to our eyes. One doctor in 1889 lent his credibility to the theory.

Twitter avatar for @PessimistsArc
Pessimists Archive @PessimistsArc
Our Mountain Home - 06 Mar 1889, Wed
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10:56 AM ∙ Aug 21, 2022
23Likes8Retweets

☎️ The telephone was once a hot new gadget, rather than a commodified white good. A British report from 1953 notes a waiting list of 350,000 people wanting a telephone installed, and one lucky women who didn’t even want one.

Twitter avatar for @PessimistsArc
Pessimists Archive @PessimistsArc
Telephones were the PS5 of 1953: "There are 350,000 people on a waiting list for telephones"
Image
7:58 PM ∙ Aug 18, 2022
96Likes21Retweets
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