Illustrated timeline of anti-fun moral panics

Cory Doctorow 8:00 pm Mon Dec 30, 2013

(Click to embiggen)

Tor.com has republished a great chart from Bad for You: Exposing the War on Fun!, forthcoming in on January 7. The chart details the central thesis of the book: that "the long-standing campaign against fun" is a recurring story in which anxious, killjoy grownups make up stupid explanations for why the stuff their kids like is terrible and should be banned, and the golden era of their own childhoods (and the amusements that reigned then) should be restored.

The chart starts with Trithemius's 1494 rant against printing presses ("The word written on parchment will last a thousand years. The printed word is on paper. How long will it last?") and moves smartly through books, steam engines, newspapers, photos, telegraphs, movies, phones, phonographs, radio, TV, computers, and (of course), the Internet.

If this kind of thing interests you, be sure to check out Tom Standage's 2006 list of moral panics, which also includes waltzes, novels, phones and games.

Bad for You: Exposing the War on Fun! [Amazon.com]

These New-Fangled Books Will Doom Us All! [Tor.com]

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