Explore how societies—from Ancient Greece to the AI age—worried how new inventions would erode morality, upend jobs, or doom humanity.
📜 About
Technology-driven moral panics often appear irrational — the result of fear, misunderstanding,
or resistance to change. But as the examples here reveal, these episodes reflect something deeper:
a complex, often uneasy negotiation between society and technological innovation.
From books and bicycles to video games and genetic engineering, moments of public alarm
have shaped how new technologies are received, regulated, and remembered. What may look
like overreaction in hindsight often speaks to deeper values: anxieties about identity,
agency, tradition, and what it means to be human in a changing world.
This site doesn’t aim to mock past fears (although it does acknowledge that, with hindsight,
some are hard to wrap our heads around). Instead, it offers a lens for understanding how people
respond to disruption — and how those responses, even when messy or misguided, leave a lasting
mark on the trajectory of innovation. Each case here shows how society didn’t just adopt new
technologies, but engaged with them, sometimes through conflict, and sometimes through deeply moral concern.
While not exhaustive, this collection highlights key moments when new technologies (or social innovations)
triggered widespread and morally framed public reactions. It was created by Andrew Maynard
(Director of Arizona State University’s Future of Being Human initiative), working with ChatGPT,
to foster more reflective thinking about the past — and about how we shape the future.