How were technological upheavals dealt with in the past?

In 314 AD Eusebius did it by creating a helpful, objective guide.

How do we handle the shift to digital living?

Offer something of transparent value.

As Grafton mentions in “Future Reading: Digitization and its discontents” we are far from the first to deal with trying to organize large amounts of information. Individuals such as Eusebius and Bussi entrepreneurially tried to curate content in different ways: the former by creating a helpful guide, the latter by putting his own opinion into everything. Eusebius was successful in his time, Bussi not so much. I think there is a key here that discernment needs to offer something of transparent value to the society, that individuals can use to further their own learning.

Be wary of exclusion from power.

In the Cambridge Forum broadcast of 1992 called From Papyrus to Cyberspace, Professor James O’Donnell eloquently discusses the losses and gains that a technological upheaval might bring. He cleverly bases his hypotheses by examining a prior defining moment of technological advance, the invention of the printing press, during which the prevailing view was that print would bring “unmanageable diversify of thought” (O’Donnell, 1992). O’Donnell extrapolates that although there was nothing unmanageable about new ideas abounding, that it was more the exclusion from power we should be wary of, and spending time on computer instead of interacting are most likely be some of the losses we might see with the advance of technology (he was right!).

Avoid Extremism of Thought

The gains of a digital culture would be similar to those enjoyed with the advent of print, namely a broader community through written word being spread by technology. He closes with a gentle reminder to us all to just calm down – doom and utopia come into play much less often than we imagine, mostly it’s a muddling through. To avoid extremism of thought either way, he sagely advises, would be our best approach.