Technology and Moral Panic: A Practical Guide

We've learned to dismiss collective alarm about new technology as "moral panic"—a way to mark reactions as uncool, unsophisticated, and vaguely embarrassing—but what if sometimes the panic is the point? 

Today's panics about kids and screens, social media and loneliness, attention crises and age verification get the same treatment we now give to warnings that recorded music would destroy communal singing, that television would reshape consciousness, that technical efficiency would dominate decision-making, that the telegraph would accelerate the pace of life, that writing would weaken memory. Perhaps humanity is doing just fine with recorded music and television, but these thinkers expressed reactions to intuition around deep loss, the fear we'd be less human on the other side of change. 

The most recent wave of emerging technology is arriving wrapped in the grand moral language of eternal life, summoning new intelligences, and the antichrist, inviting us to go beneath the policy debates about screen time limits and parental controls. We should accept this invitation to focus on human flourishing, family autonomy, and what we owe to the future, to ask questions that demand we dust off (or develop) our rusty discernment skills and embrace the moral panic.

About the speaker

Dr. Meg Leta Jones is a Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor in the Communication, Culture & Technology program at Georgetown University where she researches rules and technological change with a focus on privacy and automation. Her first book, Ctrl+Z: The Right to be Forgotten, explores the social, legal, and technical issues surrounding digital oblivion. Most recently, she published The Character of Consent: The History of Cookies and Future of Technology Policy, which tells the history of digital consent through the lens of a familiar technical object. Her current work focuses on family technology policy ranging from age verification for social media and reproductive data privacy to eldercare AI chatbots and family history platforms. She regularly consults with policymakers at the neighborhood to international level and co-teaches at the Tech Impact Lab where students learn to perform technical studies to support the work of U.S. state attorney general offices.

About the Ian R. Kerr Memorial Lecture

The Ian R. Kerr Memorial Lecture is the University of Ottawa Centre for Law, Technology and Society’s annual lecture established to enable distinguished thinkers from around the world to share with the public the results of original study on important subjects of contemporary interest on current and future technological issues.

Made possible thanks to donations to the Ian R. Kerr Memorial Fund, the lecture aims to continue the remarkable legacy of Dr. Ian R. Kerr, Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law and Technology at the University of Ottawa, by fostering discussions on the legal, ethical, and societal implications of technology, and promoting innovative research and programming in these areas. Through this platform, we hope to engage, enlighten, and encourage the exchange of ideas, honouring Dr. Kerr's contributions and his profound impact on students, faculty, and his field.

A founding member of the University of Ottawa Centre for Law, Technology and Society, Ian joined the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section in 2000 and was named as the Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law and Technology in 2001. He identified the need to examine the legal and ethical implications of technology years before these issues emerged as leading societal concerns. His towering career spanned a myriad of law and policy challenges including robots and the law, artificial intelligence, privacy, surveillance, security, digital rights management, algorithms, electronic contracting, human rights, and human enhancement. As always, he brought a unique, multi-disciplinary perspective, drawing on his four-way appointment in Law, Medicine, Philosophy, and Information Studies.

He was an immensely gifted teacher, a world-class researcher, a devoted colleague, and generous friend and mentor. He was widely recognized as a remarkable talent, whose impact on students, faculty, and his field will be felt for decades to come. In the policy realm, his work was quoted by the Supreme Court of Canada, by politicians in the House of Commons and the Senate, and in numerous government reports. His generosity, warmth, and good humour touched the lives of thousands of people. Whether national privacy commissioners or first-year law students, he made timefor everyone, offering encouragement, insight, and a deeply held view that everyone had an opportunity and responsibility to help shape our collective digital future.