If

we

don't

save

net

neutrality,

you'll

get

the

internet

one

word

at

a

time.

#savethenet #savetheinternet #netneutrality #onemorevote

🌸🌷It’s publication day!! 🌷🌸 Available for purchase in all good bookshops, online or in-person. Can’t wait for the launch tonight 🥂toppingbooks.co.uk/books/agnes-ar…

How much did the introduction of mobile phones — which crowded out drug-use-inducing pagers — contribute to reductions in teen drug use?

2020:

Sierra Club sues to stop a transmission line from brining clean hydropower from Canada to Maine

2024:

Sierra Club sues the Maine government for not doing enough to combat climate change

A fun anecdote from our latest newsletter: Motorola rallied kids to fight pager bans newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org/p/the-forgotte…

You have to read about the pager panic: newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org/p/the-forgotte…

2022: kids aren’t doing their homework because they’re doing TikTok dances

1933: kids aren’t doing their homework because they’re doing the shimmy

😱Moral Panic Checklist

☑️ Youth Trend
☑️ Worried Parents
☑️ Large new industry
☑️ Angry Incumbents
☑️ 1 Scary Sounding Study
☑️ Sensational Reporting
☑️ Book plugging charlatans
☑️ Posturing Lawmakers
☑️ Non-specific solutions
☑️“It’s different this time”pessimistsarchive.substack.com/p/all-the-time…

We wrote about the AI doomerism in The Unabomber manifesto that Tucker Carlson referenced on Joe Rogan: newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org/p/the-unabombe…

AI doomerism is incoherent reactionary populism.

No surprise then that it has been adopted by Tucker Carlson.

So many of these moments have at their center a technology that was novel (and likely disapproved of by elders) at the time, same as the smart phone for children now

Our latests investigation into pager prohibition uncovers thousands of children were arrested in the late 1980s and early 1990s for possessing pagers… newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org/p/the-forgotte…

OPINION: Jonathan Haidt’s new book “The Anxious Generation” blames youth mental health issues on social media in a way that’s easy, wrong, and dangerous.

trib.al/o1fAvVL

Handwriting is biometric authentication. Keyboards removed this ‘verification’ (so did telegrams)

It caused some issues, we figured it out.

newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org/p/the-forgotte…

1/ did a panel discussion this morning on AI and the Future of Work in which i referred to a recent commencement address at wellesley on whether education can keep up with the rise of the machines...
where by recent i mean... 1922
h/t Pessimists Archive

3/ if you're anxious, study some history (as always, Pessimists Archive is a great source), keep learning, and try optimism. in the future, we'll look back on these times as the dawn, not the twilight.
newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org/p/robots-have-…

'...because of a looming energy crisis and increasingly vehement opposition to nuclear power' (1977) newspapers.com/article/hartfo…

1830s writer recounts nightmare about living in 2000s:

- 'Carriages & carts came rattling down the highways,
horseless & driverless'
- 'Monstrous machines flew with inconceivable swiftness'
- 'The rapidity of modern conveyance, literally scalped those who
journeyed much'