Techno-Panic Self-Parody Alert

In March, Facebook acquired the virtual reality firm
Oculus Rift. At Fox News, Keith Ablow—identified as “a
psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team”—has reacted
with a
rant that reads like a parody of panicked rhetoric. Combining a
fear of new technology with a fear of popular culture, Ablow issues
a call for a federally enforced precautionary
principle that doubles as a call for censorship, all of it
offered in a tone that fluctuates unsteadily between unhinged
letter to the editor and trust me I’m a doctor.
Here’s an excerpt:

Is no one concerned that Mark Zuckerberg’s zeal
for completely immersing people in alternate realities might be
toxic for them? Has anyone wondered whether his quest reflects an
underlying contempt for something he lived through for real—or for
our shared reality, our real relationships and solving our real
problems?

I can’t be the only one wondering whether someone who encourages
people to make hundreds of false “friends” and block unwanted
feedback and transport themselves into games where they pretend
they are knights or murderers is the best shepherd to follow.

There is no FDA in the technology space to make sure that new
inventions distributed to tens or hundreds of millions of people
aren’t going to hurt them. But maybe there has to be. Because any
agency worth anything would be proactive about the data streaming
in about Facebook users suffering a disproportionate amount of
depression and video game aficionados increasing their risk of
attention deficit disorder. And any such agency would insist that
1,000 people or more use the device as much as they want, then look
at what happens to them over the course of a few years, before
deploying it to the whole country as something “fun.”

Adding that “Facebook is an addictive technological drug,”
Ablow predicts “an epidemic of psychiatric illness—with
features of narcissism and depression and dissociation and violent
behavior—such as the world has never known.” So let’s watch for
that.

Bonus link: “A
Short History of Game Panics.”