AI-Paranoia Is Nothing New: Looking Back at 1980s 'Computerphobia'
Those who fear the consequences of artificial intelligence (AI) may take comfort in knowing that they have plenty of company. New technologies always produce new anxieties.
Indeed, fretful souls in search of kindred spirits need look no deeper into history than the 1980s.
Those of us who entered adolescence during that “Morning in America” decade might have forgotten one of its ironic phenomena: “computerphobia,” or the intense fear of personal computers, at that time still a new consumer product.
A 2015 article in The Atlantic presented both quantitative and qualitative evidence of computerphobia’s reality.
On the quantitative side, an analysis of “computerphobia” references tracked by Google in books published between 1950 and 2015 showed near-zero results until the late 1970s. Then, a dramatic upward spike began around 1980 and peaked mid-decade.
Meanwhile, periodicals and newspapers picked up on the trend and addressed the new anxieties.
“The most important thing to remember about computerphobia is that it’s a natural reaction to something unfamiliar,” associate editor Charles Rubin wrote in a 1983 issue of Personal Computing magazine.
And “don’t forget that you’re in charge, not the computer,” Rubin added.
Small wonder that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “The Terminator” topped the U.S. box office chart for two weeks in 1984. A film whose premise involves a dystopian future of self-aware machines would resonate with computerphobes everywhere.
A “phobia,” of course, denotes something irrational, and sometimes we only detect the irrationality in hindsight. Whatever their defects, personal computers did not destroy human society in the 1980s.
The question of what drove the computerphobia phenomenon of that decade requires broadening our view enough to recognize that human beings have always maintained an ambivalent relationship with technology.
In some cases, new developments have inspired reverent awe. Samuel Morse’s first commercial telegraph message in 1844, for instance, brought back a fitting reply: “What Hath God Wrought?”
At other times, ignorance of the novelty has resulted in tragedy. At the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830, prominent British statesman William Huskisson, a member of Parliament for Liverpool and a former leader of the House of Commons, showed his lack of familiarity with the new technology when he failed to evade an oncoming locomotive. The accident left Huskisson’s legs mangled, and he died hours later.
Computerphobia involved fears less morbid but still unsettling.
According to the 1996 book “Women and Computers,” computerphobia entailed “a range of resistances, fears, anxieties, and hostilities.” These included–perhaps most significantly–“feeling that you can be replaced by a machine.”
This particular anxiety has manifested most often in the workforce, where machines have seemed destined to displace nearly everyone.
The good news on this front is that such anxieties have always existed, and they have always failed to materialize.
According to a 2015 article in The Guardian, for instance, technology has created far more jobs than it has destroyed. In fact, based on census data from England and Wales since 1871, a study conducted by economists at the British-based consulting firm Deloitte described technology, on balance, as a “great job-creating machine.”
Jean Vilbert, Professor of Law and Economics in Sao Paolo, Brazil, made a similar argument in a 2019 article published by the Foundation for Economic Education. Vilbert even cited the Deloitte study to show that jobs lost in one sector reappear and multiply in another.
The occasion for Vilbert’s article was speculation–rampant across 2019 headlines–that robots and AI soon would eliminate human workers. Vilbert noted that Democratic presidential candidates Andrew Yang and Bill de Blasio had fueled these anxieties through anti-automation rhetoric.
“Machines will replace humans. Artificial intelligence will outpace people. There will be no jobs for the poor. Chaos! Famine! Technology is casting a shadow over the future. This is the current mainstream outcry—or could we say paranoia?” Vilbert wrote.
Computerphobia reminds us that we have known such anxieties in the not-so-distant past.
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