Morgan Ames, who I interviewed for my book, has a new project: My Little Pony or Porn Star? Technological Utopian Edition. (I hadn't realized that Morgan wrote English copy for Japanese technical manuals, but hey we all have hidden talents. Here's the real backstory to the name, if you dare.)
MLPOPS:TUE presents quotes that may be about computers, or some older technology, and invites you to guess where they're from. For example--
[This technology] would bring the world to the classroom and make universally available the services of the finest teachers, the inspiration of the greatest leaders.
--certainly sounds like someone talking about computers in the classroom, but it's actually a quote from the 1920s about the radio.
I also like this cartoon from the 1870s, which casts novels as the great distraction of the age:
The point, of course, is that breathless predictions about the revolutionary impacts of new media and technologies-- or lamentations of their ill effects-- are nothing new. They've been part of the modern discourse about technology and progress for at least 150 years.