There are basically two ways of dealing with a new technology due to its sociological effects . Namely:
Regulate a technology when it is still young and little known and then it still hides its unexpected or undesirable consequences; or choose to wait to see what these consequences are, although then we will lose control over their regulation.
David Collingridge’s Dilemma
This dimea was initially plated by David Collingridge , an academic at Aston University of the United Kingdom, in 1980, through his book The Social Control of Technology:
When change is easy, your need cannot be anticipated; When the need for change is apparent, change has already become expensive, difficult, and laborious.
As Eugeny Morozov , visiting professor at Stanford University, abounds in the book That Explains It All (edited by John Brockman ):
Collingridge’s dilemma is one of the most elegant ways of explaining many of the complex ethical and technological trade-offs (think drones or facial recognition) that plague our globalized world.
Another way of dealing with new technologies also has to do with our predisposition to novelties, which is strongly linked to our age, as Douglas Adams , author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy , wrote satirically in an article published in The Sunday Times , 29 August 1999:
I imagine that previous generations had to endure grumbling and puffing at the appearance of inventions such as television, the telephone, the cinema, the radio, the car, the bicycle, the printing press, the wheel, etc., but do not think we have learned how the thing works, namely:
Everything that is already in the world when you were born is normal.
Everything that comes up between now and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative, and hopefully you can make a living from it.
Everything that is invented after you are thirty goes against the natural order of things and is the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it, until it has been used for about ten years and starts little by little. considered normal.