QotD [Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος]

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From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2005-11-10:

"Any technology throughout history has been adapted to two things -- first of all pornography and secondly, the paranormal." -- James Alcock, professor at York University, who specializes in the psychology of belief.

(submitted to the mailing list by Terry Labach)

[Hmm. I was under the impression that most new technologies got their economy-of-scale breakthroughs thanks to adoption for either military or pornographic purposes ...]

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There are 4 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

I've always noticed that any new communication medium is first adopted by society's pariahs.

The first news story I ever saw about the internet was about how pedophiles were using it to communicate.

And before the internet, the stories were about BBS'.

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TV and movies got through without the military, which joined those bandwagons rather late during WW2.

though the internet had the military first (being a (D)ARPA project), the military were late adopters of the WWW that was the killer app for the modern world.

i'm not sure where his paranormal comes from. yeah, pseudoscience is on the web, but its hardly been a money maker for anybody except bill dembski and right-wing pundits...

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