The weakness of moral panic is that the panicker must constantly find new folk devils. Here, Lanier blames the deviance of Trump, Musk, & Kanye on "Twitter poisoning.."
Compare Lanier on Twitter: "The human brain did not evolve to handle modern chemicals or modern media technology & is vulnerable to addiction."
vs Erasmus on books: "The very multitude of them is hurtful to scholarship, because it creates a glut & even in good things satiety is most harmful."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/opinion/trump-musk-kanye-twitter.html
@jeffjarvis And you can go back further, of course—to Plato, even—and find people concerned about the effect of communication technologies!
I wonder: Pointing to historical concerns about the effects of new communications technologies doesn't prove it's a mere "moral panic" now. Some historical concerns were probably borne out and others weren't. Similarly, some contemporary concerns are likely to prove well-founded, and others won't be.
Or: Lanier might be right even if Erasmus was wrong.
@jeffjarvis (I guess what I'm saying is that ymmv on appeals to historical concerns about communication technologies.)
