
Technophobia (from
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
τέχνη ''technē'', "art, skill, craft" and φόβος ''phobos'', "fear"), also known as technofear, is the fear or dislike of, or discomfort with, advanced
technology
Technology is the application of Conceptual model, conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible too ...
or complex devices, especially
personal computers
A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...
,
smartphones
A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as mult ...
, and
tablet computers
A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being computers ...
.
Although there are numerous interpretations of technophobia, they become more complex as technology continues to evolve. The term is generally used in the sense of an irrational fear, but others contend fears are justified. It is the opposite of
technophilia.
Larry Rosen, a
research psychologist, computer educator, and professor at
California State University, Dominguez Hills
California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH, CSU Dominguez Hills, or Cal State Dominguez Hills) is a public university in Carson, California. It was founded in 1960 and is part of the California State University (CSU) system.
In 2020, ...
, suggests that there are three dominant subcategories of technophobes – the "uncomfortable users", the "cognitive computerphobes", and "anxious computerphobes".
[Gilbert, David, Liz Lee-Kelley, and Maya Barton. "Technophobia, gender influences and consumer decision-making for technology-related products." European Journal of Innovation Management 6.4 (2003): pp. 253–263. Print.] First receiving widespread notice during the
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succee ...
, technophobia has been observed to affect various societies and communities throughout the world. This has caused some groups to take stances against some modern technological developments in order to preserve their ideologies. In some of these cases, the new technologies conflict with established beliefs, such as the personal values of simplicity and modest lifestyles.
Examples of technophobic ideas can be found in multiple forms of art, ranging from literary works such as ''
Frankenstein
''Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' is an 1818 Gothic novel written by English author Mary Shelley. ''Frankenstein'' tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a Sapience, sapient Frankenstein's monster, crea ...
'' to films like ''
The Terminator
''The Terminator'' is a 1984 American science fiction action film directed by James Cameron, written by Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd and produced by Hurd. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, a cybernetic assassin sent back in t ...
''. Many of these works portray a darker side to technology, as perceived by those who are technophobic. As technologies become increasingly complex and difficult to understand, people are more likely to harbor anxieties relating to their use of modern technologies.
Prevalence
A study published in the journal ''
Computers in Human Behavior'' was conducted between 1992 and 1994 surveying first-year college students across various countries.
The overall percentage of the 3,392
students who responded with high-level technophobic fears was 29%.
[; several points are worth noting from Table 2. First, a group of countries including Indonesia, Poland, India, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Mexico and Thailand show large percentages (over 50%) of technophobic students. In contrast, there are five countries which show under 30% technophobes (US, Yugoslavia – Croatia, Singapore, Israel and Hungary). The remaining countries were in between these two groupings.] In comparison,
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
had 58% high-level technophobes and
Mexico
Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...
had 53%.
A published report in 2000 stated that roughly 85–90% of new employees at an organization may be uncomfortable with new technology, and are technophobic to some degree.
History
Technophobia began to gain attention as a movement in England with the dawn of the
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succee ...
. With the development of new machines able to do the work of skilled craftsmen using unskilled, low-wage labor, those who worked a trade began to fear for their livelihoods. In 1675, a group of weavers destroyed machines that replaced their jobs. By 1727, the destruction had become so prevalent that
Parliament
In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...
made the demolition of machines a capital offense. This action, however, did not stop the tide of violence. The
Luddites
The Luddites were members of a 19th-century movement of English textile workers who opposed the use of certain types of automated machinery due to concerns relating to worker pay and output quality. They often destroyed the machines in organ ...
, a group of anti-technology workers, united under the name "Ludd" in March 1811, removing key components from knitting frames, raiding houses for supplies, and petitioning for trade rights while threatening greater violence. Poor harvests and food riots lent aid to their cause by creating a restless and agitated population for them to draw supporters from.
The 19th century was also the beginning of modern science, with the work of
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur (, ; 27 December 1822 – 28 September 1895) was a French chemist, pharmacist, and microbiologist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, Fermentation, microbial fermentation, and pasteurization, the la ...
,
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...
,
Gregor Mendel
Gregor Johann Mendel Order of Saint Augustine, OSA (; ; ; 20 July 1822 – 6 January 1884) was an Austrian Empire, Austrian biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Augustinians, Augustinian friar and abbot of St Thomas's Abbey, Brno, St. Thom ...
,
Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday (; 22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was an English chemist and physicist who contributed to the study of electrochemistry and electromagnetism. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic inducti ...
,
Henri Becquerel
Antoine Henri Becquerel ( ; ; 15 December 1852 – 25 August 1908) was a French nuclear physicist who shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Marie and Pierre Curie for his discovery of radioactivity.
Biography
Family and education
Becq ...
, and
Marie Curie
Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie (; ; 7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934), known simply as Marie Curie ( ; ), was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity.
She was List of female ...
, and inventors such as
Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla (;["Tesla"](_blank)
. ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; 10 July 1856 – 7 ...
,
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison (February11, 1847October18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, ...
and
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell (; born Alexander Bell; March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born Canadian Americans, Canadian-American inventor, scientist, and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. He als ...
. The world was changing rapidly, too rapidly for many, who feared the changes taking place and longed for a simpler time. The
Romantic movement
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjec ...
exemplified these feelings. Romantics tended to believe in imagination over reason, the "organic" over the mechanical, and a longing for a simpler, more
pastoral
The pastoral genre of literature, art, or music depicts an idealised form of the shepherd's lifestyle – herding livestock around open areas of land according to the seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. The target au ...
time. Poets like
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poetry, Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romanticism, Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Balla ...
and
William Blake
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake has become a seminal figure in the history of the Romantic poetry, poetry and visual art of the Roma ...
believed that the technological changes that were taking place as a part of the industrial revolution were polluting their cherished view of nature as being perfect and pure.
After
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, a fear of technology continued to grow, catalyzed by the
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With
nuclear proliferation
Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons to additional countries, particularly those not recognized as List of states with nuclear weapons, nuclear-weapon states by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonl ...
and the
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
, people began to wonder what would become of the world now that humanity had the power to manipulate it to the point of destruction. Corporate production of war technologies such as napalm, explosives, and gases during the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...
further undermined public confidence in technology's worth and purpose. In the post-WWII era,
environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology, and social movement about supporting life, habitats, and surroundings. While environmentalism focuses more on the environmental and nature-related aspects of green ideology and politics, ecolog ...
also took off as a movement. The first international air pollution conference was held in 1955, and in the 1960s, investigations into the lead content of gasoline sparked outrage among environmentalists. In the 1980s, the depletion of the ozone layer and the threat of
global warming
Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes ...
began to be taken more seriously.
Luddites

Several societal groups are considered technophobic, the most recognisable of which are the Luddites. Many technophobic groups revolt against modern technology because of their beliefs that these technologies are threatening their ways of life and livelihoods.
The Luddites were a
social movement
A social movement is either a loosely or carefully organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a Social issue, social or Political movement, political one. This may be to carry out a social change, or to re ...
of British artisans in the 19th century who organized in opposition to technological advances in the textile industry.
These advances replaced many skilled textile artisans with comparatively unskilled machine operators. The 19th century British Luddites rejected new technologies that impacted the structure of their established trades, or the general nature of the work itself.
Resistance to new technologies did not occur when the newly adopted technology aided the work process without making significant changes to it. The British Luddites protested the application of the machines, rather than the invention of the machine itself. They argued that their labor was a crucial part of the economy, and considered the skills they possessed to complete their labor as property that needed protection from the destruction caused by the autonomy of machines.
Use of modern technologies among Old Order Anabaptists
Groups considered by some people to be technophobic are the
Amish
The Amish (, also or ; ; ), formally the Old Order Amish, are a group of traditionalist Anabaptism, Anabaptist Christianity, Christian Christian denomination, church fellowships with Swiss people, Swiss and Alsace, Alsatian origins. As they ...
and other
Old Order Anabaptists. The Amish follow a set of moral codes outlined in the
Ordnung
In the Anabaptist tradition, an Ordnung is a set of rules describing the way of life of church members. The term is mostly used by Amish and Old Order Mennonites. '' Ordnung'' () is the German word for order, discipline, rule, arrangement, o ...
, which rejects the use of certain forms of technology for personal use.
Donald B. Kraybill, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner and
Steven M. Nolt state in their book ''The Amish'':
What the Amish do, is selective use of modern technologies in order to maintain their belief and culture.
Technophobia in arts
An early example of technophobia in fiction and popular culture is
Mary Shelley
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley ( , ; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel ''Frankenstein, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' (1818), which is considered an History of science fiction# ...
's ''
Frankenstein
''Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' is an 1818 Gothic novel written by English author Mary Shelley. ''Frankenstein'' tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a Sapience, sapient Frankenstein's monster, crea ...
''.
A 1960 episode of ''
The Twilight Zone
''The Twilight Zone'' is an American media franchise based on the anthology series, anthology television series created by Rod Serling in which characters find themselves dealing with often disturbing or unusual events, an experience described ...
'' called "
A Thing About Machines" deals with a man's hatred for modern things such as electric razors, televisions, electric typewriters and clocks.
Technophobia achieved commercial success in the 1980s with the movie ''
The Terminator
''The Terminator'' is a 1984 American science fiction action film directed by James Cameron, written by Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd and produced by Hurd. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, a cybernetic assassin sent back in t ...
'', in which a computer becomes self-aware, and decides to kill all humans.
Shows such as ''
Doctor Who
''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series, created by Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber and Donald Wilson (writer and producer), Donald Wilson, depicts the adventures of an extraterre ...
'' have tackled the issue of technophobia – most specifically in the episode "
The Robots of Death", with a character displaying a great fear of robots due to their lack of body language, described by the
Fourth Doctor
The Fourth Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the British science fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. He is portrayed by Tom Baker.
Within the series' narrative, the Doctor is a centuries-old alien Time Lord from ...
as giving them the appearance of "
dead men walking". Series consultant
Kit Pedler
Christopher Magnus Howard Pedler (11 June 1927 – 27 May 1981) was an English medical scientist, parapsychologist, and science fiction screenwriter and author.
Career
Pedler was the head of the electron microscopy department at the Institute ...
also used this fear as a basis for the inspiration of classic ''Doctor Who'' monsters the
Cybermen, with the creatures being inspired by his own fear of
artificial limbs becoming so common that it would become impossible to know when someone had stopped being a man and become simply a machine. ''
Virtuosity
''Virtuosity'' is a 1995 American science fiction action film directed by Brett Leonard and starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. Howard W. Koch Jr. served as an executive producer for the film. The film was released in the United St ...
'' speaks of a virtual serial killer who manages to escape to the real world. He goes on a rampage before he is stopped. This is a true technophobic movie in that its main plot is about technology gone wrong. It introduces a killer who blatantly destroys people.
[Technophobia: Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology](_blank)
/ref>
''Avatar'' is exemplary of technology's hold on humans who are empowered by it and visually demonstrates the amount of terror it instills upon those native to the concept. It enforces the notion that foreign creatures from Pandora are not only frightened by technology, but it is something they loathe; its potential to cause destruction could exceed their very existence. In contrast, the film itself used advanced technology such as the stereoscope
A stereoscope is a device for viewing a stereoscopy, stereoscopic pair of separate images, depicting left-eye and right-eye views of the same scene, as a single three-dimensional image.
A typical stereoscope provides each eye with a lens that ...
in order to give viewers the illusion of physically taking part in an experience that would introduce them to a civilization struggling with technophobia.Man of Extremes, The New Yorker
/ref>
See also
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References
Further reading
* Brosnan, M. (1998) Technophobia: The psychological impact of information technology. Routledge.
* Dan Dinello ''Technophobia: Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology''
Environmental History Timeline
" 20 July 2008.
External links
*
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{{Media and human factors