ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the common belief in technological determinism and the pessimism and fear it can cause. It examines the emergence of complex sociotechnical systems like electric grids and communication networks. The chapter shows that imagining and warning about the worst has been a common means of generating fear of, but also coping with, technological change in Western societies. Historians of technology have written extensively about the rise of the belief in “autonomous technology” or “technological determinism” in Western societies, as well as the increasingly prominent feelings of pessimism and fear that have come along with these beliefs. The chapter also examines how wider cultural fears and anxieties about large technological systems of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were reflected in military thought of that time. Amateur broadcasts could clog the airwaves, preventing legitimate military communications, but could also be used to feed false information to ships at sea.
