Tech Optimism & Tech Pessimism

What are tech optimism and tech pessimism? Well, to be honest, they're pretty much exactly what they sound like. They're based in perceptions of risk, according to Hoschschild, Crabill, and Sen, and they're caused by people without much technical knowledge obtaining most of their information about technology from secondary sources, such as media--and we all know how spot-on accurate media can be. Hjorliefsson, quoted by Hochschild et al., defines tech optimism as the "'underestimation and neglect of uncertainty' in favor of 'widely shared speculative promise,'" (2) and tech pessimism as "the overestimation of threat and harmful impact and insufficient attention to benefits or to people’s ability to respond appropriately to risk" (3).

According to Hochschild et al.'s research, a lot of studies have been done to find out what influences tech optimism and pessimism, and the only real consensus seems to be that it has a lot to do with an individual's sociocultural context, as well as individual preference. When it comes to excessive tech optimism or tech pessimism, however, Hochschild et al. have found that "roughly the same variables appear to generate excessive optimism as excessive pessimism" (4). This is interesting to note, because it seems to imply that a leaning towards tech optimism or tech pessimism depends most heavily on the individual's predisposition for one or the other based on what they have been exposed to. 

It kind of reminds me of the whole "horseshoe theory," which is a political science theory that basically says that people that are far right and far left may behave very similarly, even though they differ completely in their core ideologies. It's the idea behind arguments that Bernie Sanders' supporters and Donald Trump's supporters are actually very similar, but just have different sociocultural contexts and ideologies (the most fervent supporters of both tend to be young, middle-class white men; very passionate; etc.). It would appear as though the same is true for tech optimism and tech pessimism: the contributing factors are the same in both situations, but it depends on how the person initially/instinctively feels about the technological situation at hand. I'm interested to see how rhetorical appeals influence people one way or another.

References (listed by order of reference)

Hochschild, Jennifer, Alex Crabill, and Maya Sen. "Technology Optimism or Pessimism: How Trust in Science Shapes Policy Attitudes toward Genomic Science." Issues in Technology Innovation 21 (2012): 1-16. Web.

"How Accurate Is the Horseshoe Theory?" Politics Stack Exchange. Stack Exchange, 7 May 2015. Web. <http://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/8209/how-accurate-is-the-horseshoe-theory#comment25084_8209>.