We Were Always Afraid.
It Always Worked Out.
From the first flame to the first transistor, from the printing press to the internet — every transformative technology in human history followed the same three-act script. And every single time, we told ourselves the same thing: this time is different. This time it's too dangerous. This time we should stop.
We Were Wrong.
Every Single Time.
Fire
Early humans learned to control fire — cooking food, providing warmth, extending the productive day beyond sunset. It was the first technology, the first tool that could not be found in nature and had to be deliberately created and maintained. Life expectancy, nutrition, and shelter all improved within generations.
Uncontrolled fire kills. Early communities had every legitimate reason to fear a force that could consume a forest, a camp, or a rival tribe in hours. Mythology across every culture treats fire as a divine, dangerous, forbidden force — stolen from the gods at enormous cost.
Fire is the power of destruction. It cannot be tamed. We have stolen something that was never meant for us. — Paraphrase of a common mythic theme, not a direct quotation
Fire enabled cooking, which made calories more bioavailable and accelerated human brain development. It extended the day. It enabled metallurgy, ceramics, and eventually every form of industry. Every subsequent technology in this list was made possible by fire. We never looked back.
Writing
Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics made it possible to store knowledge outside the human mind for the first time. Laws, trade records, stories, and science could persist beyond any single lifetime. Civilization, as we define it, begins here.
Plato — one of history's greatest minds — wrote in the Phaedrus, through a king in Socrates's story, that writing would weaken memory and give people the appearance of wisdom without the substance.
"…this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves." — Plato, Phaedrus 274e–275a, tr. Benjamin Jowett (the king speaks, in Socrates's story) [1]
Writing created philosophy, mathematics, medicine, law, and science. It allowed human knowledge to compound across centuries. The complete works of Plato himself — including his warning about writing — survived only because they were written down.
The Printing Press
Johannes Gutenberg's moveable type press reduced the cost of a book from a year's skilled labor to a few days' wages. Literacy rates, which had been in single digits for millennia, began a centuries-long ascent. The Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution all followed directly from this single technology.
The Catholic Church, monarchs, and scholars across Europe feared that mass printing would spread heresy, sedition, and misinformation to a population incapable of discerning truth. Censorship regimes were established across the continent. The printing press was called the weapon of the devil by religious authorities.
"I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both!" — Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia, 1671 [2]
The printing press ended the Church's monopoly on information — and in doing so enabled the scientific method, democratic government, and eventually the newspaper, the novel, and the textbook. Berkeley was right that printing would spread learning and make people harder to rule. He was wrong that this was a bad thing.
The Steam Engine
Newcomen's engine and Watt's improvements created the first practical way to convert heat into mechanical work at scale. The Industrial Revolution followed, pulling hundreds of millions out of subsistence agriculture and, over the following century, producing the highest sustained rise in living standards in human history.
The Luddites — skilled textile workers — destroyed steam-powered looms across England in 1811–1816, fearing permanent unemployment. Medical experts warned that traveling at the "unsafe" speed of 20 mph by steam train would cause passengers' lungs to collapse. Newspapers predicted mass social disintegration.
"What can be more palpably absurd and ridiculous than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling twice as fast as stage-coaches?" — Quarterly Review, vol. 31, no. 62, 1825 [3]
Steam power created more jobs than it destroyed within a generation, while making each worker's output vastly more valuable. Human lungs proved resilient to 20 mph. Living standards, for the first time in history, began compounding upward. The Luddites' grandchildren were richer than any prior generation had been.
Vaccines
Edward Jenner demonstrated that inoculation with cowpox produced immunity to smallpox — which had killed an estimated 300 million people in the 20th century alone [4]. The germ theory of disease and the vaccine platform that followed have since eradicated smallpox entirely, nearly eradicated polio, and saved hundreds of millions of lives.
Critics — including prominent physicians — argued that injecting animal disease material into humans was heretical, dangerous, and "bestial." Cartoonists depicted vaccinated people sprouting cow horns. Anti-vaccination leagues formed across Britain and the United States. The British government's 1853 compulsory vaccination law triggered riots.
James Gillray's 1802 caricature The Cow-Pock showed Jenner's vaccinated patients sprouting cow features. — Wellcome Collection (public domain) [5]
Vaccines are the single most effective public health intervention in history, responsible for saving more lives than any other medical technology. Smallpox — which killed 30% of those it infected — was declared eradicated in 1980. The World Health Organization estimates vaccines prevent 2–3 million deaths every year, even today.
The Railroad
The Stockton and Darlington Railway (1825) and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (1830) ushered in the age of rail. By 1850, 6,000 miles of track crossed Britain. By 1870, the U.S. Transcontinental Railroad was complete. National markets replaced local ones. Urbanization accelerated. The modern economy was born.
Physicians warned that the human body could not survive speeds above 30 mph without psychological breakdown. Farmers near tracks claimed cows would stop giving milk. Religious leaders called the locomotive a "mechanized dragon" defying God's natural order. Parliament was told railways would destroy the English countryside permanently.
Eton College opposed the Great Western Railway's route near Slough in 1834–35. — Friends of the National Railway Museum [6]
Railways connected cities, enabled national commerce, moved food from farms to urban markets, slashed travel times from days to hours, and created the first mass tourism industry. The cows continued to produce milk. The countryside, though changed, survived. England became the wealthiest nation on Earth.
Electrical Grid
Edison's DC system and Tesla's AC grid brought electric light, electric motors, and eventually refrigeration, radio, and computing to every home and factory. The electrification of America between 1880 and 1930 is the single greatest productivity leap in economic history. Everything that defines modern life is downstream of the electrical grid.
Gas lighting companies ran campaigns claiming electric lights caused blindness and brain damage. Thomas Edison himself electrocuted animals publicly to discredit AC power as too dangerous. Insurance companies refused to cover buildings with electrical wiring. Newspapers reported that electric wires caused "electrical neurosis" in nearby residents.
In 1888–89, Edison campaigned to have alternating current restricted as too dangerous. — Reynolds & Bernstein, Edison and “The Chair,” 1989 [7]
The electrical grid eliminated the open flame as the primary source of indoor light — reducing house fires, lung disease from candle and gas lamp combustion, and the cost of extending the productive day. AC power won. Edison was wrong. The grid now powers every hospital, every school, every factory, and every device on which you are reading this.
The Automobile
Benz's Patent-Motorwagen (1885) and Ford's Model T (1908) replaced the horse as humanity's primary mode of transportation. Suburbia, national highway systems, mass tourism, and the modern supply chain all emerged from the car. Within two generations, the automobile reshaped every city and village on Earth.
Early regulations in Britain required a person to walk ahead of every automobile waving a red flag to warn horses and pedestrians. Newspapers called cars "devil wagons." The ASPCA warned of mass horse unemployment. Medical experts described "automobile face" — a permanent disfigurement caused by high-speed wind exposure.
As president of Princeton in 1906, Woodrow Wilson said the automobile was spreading socialistic feeling in the country. — Woodrow Wilson, 1906, as documented by the Federal Highway Administration [8]
The automobile enabled mass mobility, created the modern economy of scale, connected rural communities to urban markets, and powered a century of prosperity. Wilson later rode in motorcades as President. Automobile faces remained normal faces. The horse, for its part, was largely liberated from hard labor.
The Airplane
The Wright Brothers flew 12 seconds at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Within 66 years, humans were on the moon. Commercial aviation connected every continent, enabled global trade, created the modern tourism economy, and made overnight delivery of mail across the world not just possible but routine.
Early newspapers largely refused to cover the Wright Brothers' flights, believing them physically impossible. The New York Times editorial board wrote on October 9, 1903 — ten weeks before Kitty Hawk — that a flying machine that really flew might take one to ten million years to evolve. Military experts said aircraft would never have practical combat use. Doctors warned of "altitude sickness" at 5,000 feet.
"It might be assumed that the flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years." — New York Times, October 9, 1903 (ten weeks before Kitty Hawk) [9]
Orville Wright lived to see commercial aviation, jet engines, and the sound barrier broken — all within his lifetime (he died in 1948). Today, commercial aviation moves 4.5 billion passengers annually across 100,000 daily flights. It is statistically the safest form of transportation in history. The Times missed by at least a million years.
The Telephone
Alexander Graham Bell's telephone (1876) made instantaneous voice communication across distance possible for the first time. Business, emergency services, medicine, and family life were all transformed. The telephone also laid the physical infrastructure — copper wire networks — on which the internet would eventually run.
In late 1876, Western Union famously declined to buy Bell's patents for $100,000. Physicians warned that telephone wires would spread disease through the air. Social critics argued the telephone would destroy community by allowing people to interact without being in the same physical space.
In late 1876, Western Union's president, William Orton, declined to buy Bell's patents for $100,000. — American Heritage, “Hindsight, Foresight, and No Sight,” 1985 [10]
The telephone became the foundation of modern commerce and emergency response. Western Union's missed acquisition of Bell's patent is considered the most expensive business mistake in corporate history. The telephone did not destroy community — it extended it. The company that passed on it no longer exists in any meaningful form.
Radio
Marconi's wireless telegraphy and the subsequent rise of broadcast radio created the first mass medium. News, music, sports, and political speech could reach millions simultaneously. Radio coordinated democratic societies during two World Wars and became the primary information infrastructure of the 20th century.
Medical authorities warned that radio waves would cause cancer, sterility, and mental illness through invisible "electrical bombardment." Teachers worried radio would make children incapable of reading. The U.S. Navy successfully lobbied Congress to ban civilian radio in 1917, arguing the airwaves were too important to leave to amateurs.
Radio informed and united democratic societies, provided critical communications infrastructure in wartime, created the modern entertainment industry, and built the regulatory and spectrum-management frameworks on which every wireless technology since — from WiFi to 5G — is built. Children continued to read books. Some of them became radio engineers.
Television
Philo Farnsworth's all-electronic television (1927) and subsequent mass production created the most powerful mass communication medium of the 20th century. The moon landing, civil rights marches, and presidential debates all entered living rooms simultaneously. Television created a shared national culture — for better and worse.
The New York Times doubted in 1939 that the average American family would have time to sit and watch a screen. Child psychologists warned TV would cause juvenile delinquency and the collapse of family dinner. The phrase "idiot box" was coined in the 1950s by critics predicting cognitive decline.
"The problem with television is that the people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen; the average American family hasn't time for it." — New York Times, 1939 (Orrin E. Dunlap Jr.) [11]
The Times was, again, significantly wrong. Television became the defining medium of the 20th century, broadcasting the Civil Rights Movement into resistant households and accelerating cultural change. It also created an industry employing millions and drove a century of consumer electronics innovation. American families found the time.
Nuclear Power
(First Wave)
The world's first commercial nuclear power station, Calder Hall in the UK (1956), demonstrated that atomic fission could generate electricity at scale. By 1970, nuclear power was supplying 18% of U.S. electricity at the lowest cost per kWh of any generating source. It was — and remains — the cleanest baseload energy source on Earth.
Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986) — two accidents involving fundamentally different, older reactor designs — cemented public terror of all things nuclear. Anti-nuclear movements shut down plant construction across the West. Germany eventually closed all its atomic plants after Fukushima — and replaced them with coal, causing an estimated 1,100 additional deaths per year from air pollution [12].
Nuclear power is dead. We cannot trust this technology. The risk is simply too great. — A common post-Chernobyl argument, paraphrased
All deaths directly attributable to the entire history of nuclear power — including Chernobyl and Fukushima in full — amount to fewer than 200. Coal kills an estimated 800,000 people globally per year. The fear of nuclear power has caused far more death and suffering than nuclear power itself, by forcing nations back to fossil fuels. The second wave is already underway.
The Internet
Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web (1991) made the internet publicly accessible. By 2005, broadband penetration had crossed 50% in the U.S. The internet democratized access to information, created trillions in economic value, enabled remote work, and connected billions of humans to one another — compressing the geography of knowledge to zero. Amazon launched in 1994 as an online bookstore. By 2005 it was selling everything. The world would never shop the same way again.
The Retail Apocalypse
As Amazon and eBay gained traction in the late 1990s, economists, retail executives, and urban planners sounded the alarm in unison: every brick-and-mortar store in America would be wiped out. Main Street was declared dead. Shopping malls were called "cathedrals of a dying religion." The National Retail Federation warned that hundreds of thousands of retail jobs would vanish within a decade and never return.
The Death of Every Profession
It wasn't just retail. Travel agents were declared extinct the moment Expedia launched (1996). Stockbrokers would be eliminated by E*Trade. Real estate agents would be replaced by online listings. Lawyers would be made obsolete by legal databases. Doctors would be replaced by WebMD. Teachers would be replaced by online courses. Journalists would be replaced by bloggers.
"Travel agents as we know them are at risk, especially old-fashioned, transaction-processing agents." — Robert LaFleur, Bear Stearns analyst, quoted in Flight International, October 2000 [13]
Y2K: The Digital Apocalypse
As 1999 turned to 2000, governments and corporations spent an estimated $300–600 billion globally [14] preparing for the "Y2K bug" — the fear that two-digit year codes would cause every computer system on Earth to crash simultaneously at midnight on January 1, 2000, triggering bank failures, power grid collapse, nuclear plant meltdowns, and the end of modern civilization.
"Y2K presents the first nationwide information age challenge to the nation's critical infrastructures." — U.S. Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT), Senate Y2K Committee, 1999 [15]
The Death of Human Thought
Newsweek ran a famous 1995 piece titled "The Internet? Bah!" arguing the web could never replace libraries, newspapers, or human connection. The American Psychological Association warned that internet use caused depression, social isolation, and the erosion of real-world relationships.
"The truth in [sic] no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works." — Clifford Stoll, Newsweek, February 27, 1995 [16]
Brick-and-mortar retail did not die. It adapted. The United States has more retail square footage per capita today than in 1999 — and more retail workers than ever, just in different roles. Travel agents who pivoted to luxury and specialist bookings thrived. Y2K caused almost no meaningful disruption — planes flew, banks opened, nuclear plants hummed.
What the internet actually did: created Amazon, Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, Zoom, and Spotify. It enabled remote work that has reshaped where people live. It put the Library of Congress in every pocket. The global internet economy now exceeds $30 trillion annually — and every profession that was supposed to die is still here, just doing its job differently, often better, and at greater scale than ever before.
The Smartphone
Apple's iPhone (2007) put a supercomputer, a camera, a map, a library, a bank, and a direct line to every human being on Earth into a single pocket-sized device. Global smartphone penetration reached 55% by 2022. In the developing world, the smartphone delivered banking, healthcare information, and market access to billions with no prior access to any of these services.
The smartphone was blamed for destroying attention spans, causing teen depression, ending human conversation, and making the next generation incapable of reading maps. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer laughed publicly at the iPhone, saying "there's no chance" it would gain significant market share. Pediatricians issued warnings. Congress held more hearings.
"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance." — Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, USA Today, April 30, 2007 [17]
Smartphones gave 4 billion people access to banking for the first time. Mobile health apps enabled remote diagnosis in rural communities. The iPhone's App Store alone represents a $1.1 trillion annual economy. Navigation apps have likely prevented millions of accidents and billions of hours of being lost. The issues of attention and teen mental health are real — and are being actively addressed by the same researchers who can publish their findings globally, instantly, for free, on a smartphone.
Artificial Intelligence
GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, and their successors represent the first general-purpose reasoning tools available to every human being. AI is already accelerating drug discovery, diagnosing cancer earlier, writing code, tutoring students, and extending the productive reach of every professional on Earth. The economic value being created is measured in the tens of trillions.
Prominent AI researchers warn of existential risk. Legislatures worldwide are racing to regulate something they barely understand. Labor unions fear mass unemployment. Artists fear the end of creativity. Parents fear the corruption of their children. Governments fear misinformation. Everyone fears something — which means, historically, that we are right on schedule.
AI poses an existential risk to humanity. We may be building the last technology humans ever need to invent — because it will invent everything after that, without us. — A common argument, paraphrased
We don't know how AI ends. But we know how every prior version of this story ended. We know that knowledge cannot be unlearned. We know that fear is universal and not historically reliable as a guide to outcomes. And we know — from fire to the internet — that human beings have an extraordinary capacity to adapt, regulate, and ultimately thrive alongside technologies that once seemed apocalyptic. The pattern is 16 for 16.
Magical Atomic Energy (SMRs)
Small Modular Reactors are factory-built, rapidly deployable, passively safe atomic power plants that can generate 300 MW of clean electricity per unit for 60–80 years. They can be sited anywhere, including on retired coal plant land, and surrounded by parks and gardens. The first commercial SMRs are being licensed and built right now. This is the next entry on this list.
The public fears radiation. Environmentalists fight permit applications. Communities protest proposed sites. Newspapers publish alarming headlines about waste. Politicians refuse to be photographed in front of cooling towers. The word "nuclear" itself polls like a disease. The safety data is dismissed. The comparison to coal is ignored. We've seen this script before — seventeen times.
Not in my backyard. Not in my state. Not ever. We don't need nuclear power — we can just use renewables. — A common response to SMR proposals, paraphrased
Atomic energy causes 0.07 deaths per terawatt-hour. Coal causes 24.6. The physics are settled. The engineering has advanced enormously. The SMR designs under construction now have passive safety systems that make the failure modes of Chernobyl and Fukushima physically impossible. This technology will power our schools, fund our classrooms through tax revenue, free us from hostile foreign energy, and — exactly like every other technology on this list — it will be fine. Better than fine. It will be transformative.
Every Time, We Were Wrong.
Fourteen times settled. Two still being written.
From fire to the smartphone, across a million years of human history, the pattern has never broken. New technology arrives. People are genuinely, understandably afraid. Reasonable experts raise real concerns. Society debates, regulates, and adapts. And then — without exception — life gets measurably better. Not because there were no risks. But because humans are extraordinarily good at managing risks they can see, understand, and govern democratically.
Artificial Intelligence and Small Modular Reactors are the newest entries on this list. Unlike every technology before them, their stories are still being written. History doesn't guarantee the outcome — but it reminds us that fear alone has never been a reliable predictor of it. What we can do is judge them on evidence rather than alarm, govern them wisely, tax them fairly, and invest what they produce in the next generation. That's what fundOurKids.org is here to do.
Today's Two Fears Aren't New.
They're the Same Book,
Two Chapters Later.
Artificial Intelligence
AI is the newest technology to arrive faster than our language for it. It is already shortening drug discovery, catching disease earlier, tutoring students who have no tutor, and extending the reach of everyone who uses it.
The concerns are understandable and worth taking seriously — work, accuracy, accountability, and who holds the controls. What the last million years suggest is that societies meet technologies like this by learning them, regulating them, and putting them to use, rather than by refusing them.
Small Modular Reactors
Small Modular Reactors are factory-built, passively safe plants that produce clean, reliable power for decades — sited on retired coal land, close to the communities they serve, without the emissions the grid still depends on.
The concerns deserve real governance: siting, waste, oversight, and public trust are earned, not assumed. The historical lesson is the same one every entry above teaches — the answer to a powerful new technology has always been to improve and regulate it, not abandon it.
Artificial Intelligence and Small Modular Reactors are today's two verdict-pending technologies. Everything above shows that fear has accompanied every major leap humanity has made, and that it has never been a reliable guide to how the story ends. What we can do is judge them on evidence, govern them well, tax them fairly, and direct what they produce toward the greatest investment any society can make: the education of its children.
FundOurKids.orgSources17 references
- 1.Plato, Phaedrus, tr. Benjamin Jowett (c. 370 BCE) classics.mit.edu
- 2.Sir William Berkeley, 1671, quoted in the Colonial Williamsburg Journal research.colonialwilliamsburg.org
- 3.Quarterly Review, vol. 31, no. 62 (1825), "Canals and Rail-Roads," p. 361, traced by Quote Investigator quoteinvestigator.com
- 4.Ohio State Origins, "The WHO and the Eradication of Smallpox" origins.osu.edu
- 5.James Gillray, The Cow-Pock, 1802, Wellcome Collection; discussed in History Today historytoday.com
- 6.Mike Peart, A fine Eton mess (Eton College and the Great Western Railway, 1833–35), Friends of the National Railway Museum nrmfriends.org.uk
- 7.Reynolds & Bernstein, "Edison and 'The Chair,'" 1989 simson.net
- 8.Woodrow Wilson, 1906, in Richard Weingroff, Federal Highway Administration fhwa.dot.gov
- 9.The New York Times, October 9, 1903, "Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly" (Wikisource) en.wikisource.org
- 10.American Heritage, "Hindsight, Foresight, and No Sight," June/July 1985 americanheritage.com
- 11.The New York Times, 1939, Orrin E. Dunlap Jr., traced by Quote Investigator quoteinvestigator.com
- 12.Jarvis, Deschenes & Jha, The Private and External Costs of Germany's Nuclear Phase-Out, NBER Working Paper 26598 nber.org
- 13.Flight International, October 2000, "Changing roles" flightglobal.com
- 14.Smithsonian Institution, Y2K si.edu
- 15.U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Thompson/Bennett Y2K release, 1999 hsgac.senate.gov
- 16.Clifford Stoll, "The Internet? Bah!", Newsweek, February 27, 1995 (Elon University archive) elon.edu
- 17.Steve Ballmer, USA Today, April 30, 2007 (MacDailyNews copy) macdailynews.com
