Knowra Technophobia Technophobia Technophobia is fear, anxiety, or strong aversion toward technology, especially computers and unfamiliar or advanced technologies. It can range from discomfort to persistent avoidance.
Technology anxiety : Unease or apprehension about using or learning technological systems. This narrower form of distress often appears when technophobia centers on operating devices.
Luddite : A member of an early nineteenth-century English movement that attacked machinery threatening workers' livelihoods. The Luddites are often invoked as an early symbol of resistance to technological change.
Digital divide : Unequal access to digital technologies and the skills or resources needed to use them. Anxiety about technology can compound barriers that already limit digital participation.
Technophilia : Strong enthusiasm for technology and its adoption. It expresses the opposing orientation: attraction rather than fear or aversion.
Specific phobia : An anxiety disorder involving persistent, disproportionate fear of a particular object or situation. Technophobia can resemble a specific phobia when fear is intense, persistent, and impairing.
Industrial Revolution : A period of major economic and social transformation driven by mechanized production, beginning in Britain in the eighteenth century. Rapid mechanization made fears about machines, work, and social disruption newly visible.
Digital literacy : The ability to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information using digital technologies. Training in practical digital skills can address uncertainty that contributes to technophobia.
Luddism : Opposition to particular technologies or their social and economic effects. Luddism can be a deliberate political stance, unlike anxiety centered on technology itself.
Uncertainty avoidance : A tendency to feel discomfort with ambiguous, unpredictable, or unfamiliar situations. New technologies can intensify fear by making outcomes and procedures feel uncertain.
John Henry (folklore) : An African American folk hero whose contest against a steam-powered hammer ends in his death. The legend dramatizes human costs and anxieties surrounding mechanized labor.
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