Every new acceleration technology has been met with the same ambivalent wonder and worry

Evidence

Ambivalent evaluations of these transformations are characteristic of modernity and show up over and over again in cultural conflicts about each of these innovations: in contemporary testimonials of various associations one often recognizes the experience of the “alluring and at the same time frightening” remarked by Heine. For instance, in 1877 W. G. Greg already formulates it like this: “doubtless the outstanding mark of life in the second half of the nineteenth century is speed—the hurry that fills it, the speed with which we move, the great pressure under which we work—and it behooves us, first, to consider the question whether this great speed is something intrinsically good, and second, the question whether it is worth the price we pay for it—a price that we can only estimate and reliably determine with difficulty.” — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 170

Categorization

• CANDY: An 1877 diagnosis of speed-society could have been written yesterday; quotable and counterintuitive about the age of the current tech moral panic.
• XREF: Directly echoes Rosa’s own ambivalence theme and parallels complaints about immodesty recurrences in a known article. — connects to: Iconic robots reflect current societal hopes and fears about technology. — Joanna Stern, I Am Not a Robot- My Year Using AI to…, 715

Broader Connections

• Iconic robots reflect current societal hopes and fears about technology. #epitomizes (0.82) — Joanna Stern, I Am Not a Robot- My Year Using AI to…, 715