When Giants Fight Change: A Historical Pattern of Progress vs. Panic
How disinformation campaigns against transformative technologies reveal a timeless playbook of power preservation
Progress has never arrived without a fight. Time and again, history's paradigm shifts have been accompanied by smokescreens of fear and battles for control. It turns out that disinformation is not a bug in these moments of change — it's a feature of empire preservation, deliberately deployed by those who dread losing their grip on power.
Today, as artificial intelligence reshapes our world, we're witnessing familiar patterns of resistance. The "AI guys" — researchers, developers, and companies pushing the boundaries of machine intelligence — face coordinated campaigns of fear, uncertainty, and doubt that echo through centuries of technological disruption. To understand the present, we must first look to the past.
Defining the Battlefield
Before diving into history, it's crucial to understand what we're dealing with. Misinformation is false or inaccurate information spread without malicious intent — the digital equivalent of well-meaning but wrong gossip. Disinformation, however, is false information deliberately created and spread to deceive, manipulate, or serve specific agenda. It's misinformation with malice aforethought.
When we examine historical resistance to technological progress, we see both forms at play. Confused monks genuinely believed printed books were inferior (misinformation), while Church authorities strategically framed the printing press as a threat to social order to protect their power (disinformation). Understanding this distinction helps us recognize when legitimate concerns are being weaponized for ulterior motives.
The Printing Press Panic
In the 15th century, Johannes Gutenberg's printing press sparked an information revolution. Suddenly, books could be copied en masse, knowledge could travel faster than ever before, and the monopoly of monasteries and kings over information was under siege.
The reaction from the entrenched elite was swift and ferocious. Scribes' guilds — skilled copyists whose livelihood was threatened — smashed printing presses and chased early printers out of town. Rumors spread that this machine was the devil's work, an instrument of witchcraft or black magic. In 1501, Pope Alexander VI issued an edict threatening excommunication for anyone who printed books without Church approval.
Religious authorities thundered that cheaply printed pamphlets and Bibles in local languages would sow chaos and heresy among the masses. Even respected scholars joined the chorus of fear. One monkish abbot derided printed books as inferior, warning that these mass-produced texts were riddled with errors and would never equal the beauty of hand-copied manuscripts. (Never mind the irony that his anti-print screed itself got widely circulated... via the printing press.)
What was really happening? The medieval Catholic Church and its scribes had enjoyed a centuries-long gatekeeper role. They controlled what knowledge was copied and disseminated, maintaining a tight grip on intellectual life. Gutenberg's innovation threatened to democratize knowledge, tearing down that gate.
The Church's response was to frame the printing press as a threat to truth and social order — a smokescreen to hide the real issue: the Church feared losing its monopoly on knowledge and authority. Despite book burnings and bans, the technology spread. It ignited the Renaissance and Reformation, empowered new voices, and put books into the hands of common people.
War of the Currents: Edison's Shock Tactics
Fast-forward to the late 19th century, and another revolution was underway: electrification. Thomas Edison, celebrated inventor and titan of early industry, had built his empire on direct current (DC) electricity. Enter Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse with a rival innovation: alternating current (AC), capable of distributing power more efficiently across long distances.
AC posed an existential threat to Edison's DC-based business. And so Edison — the established giant of that technological era — resorted to a campaign of fear, sensationalism, and outright deception to defend his dominance.
The "War of the Currents" became a publicity battle for hearts and minds. Edison launched a relentless propaganda campaign to convince the public that AC power wasn't just different — it was deadly. In a series of grotesque demonstrations staged for maximum shock value, Edison's associates publicly electrocuted animals (dogs, horses, even reportedly an elephant) using AC power to imprint the horror of "unsafe" electricity on the public psyche.
Newspapers ate it up, spreading headlines about the "dangers" of the new current. Edison even managed to influence the State of New York to adopt the electric chair as a method of execution, insisting that an AC-powered electric chair be used for the first time in history. His message was clear: if alternating current was fit to kill condemned criminals, surely it was too dangerous to power your home.
This was disinformation in service of market share. Edison, fearing loss of control over the nascent electricity market, cloaked his self-interest in the mantle of public safety. He who had earlier opposed capital punishment found it convenient to champion a gruesome new execution device — all to tag his rival's technology with the stigma of death.
In the end, science and practicality won out: AC power's advantages proved undeniable, and it became the standard powering the world. But the episode remains a textbook example of how incumbent powers deploy fear-mongering and distortion to defend their turf during paradigm shifts.
The Liberation Engine
No wonder the old guard is nervous. AI is not a weapon or a toy — it's an instrument of liberation, the next great tool for human advancement. That liberation is precisely what threatens the traditional gatekeepers. If a free or low-cost AI model can help someone do sophisticated research without a pricey education, or write code without a Silicon Valley company, or create art without a big studio — that undercuts longstanding power dynamics.
As Stewart Brand observed decades ago, "Information wants to be free." AI is like the printing press on steroids, capable of not just distributing information but turning information into applied knowledge on demand. This terrifies institutions that have built their business models on scarcity — scarce access to knowledge, scarce ability to create, scarce pathways to innovation.
Consider what AI democratizes:
- Education: Personal tutors available to anyone with internet access
- Research: Sophisticated analysis capabilities once reserved for well-funded institutions
- Creativity: Tools that can help anyone express complex ideas in words, images, or code
- Problem-solving: Access to reasoning capabilities that can tackle everything from medical diagnoses to engineering challenges
- Translation: Breaking down language barriers that have historically limited global collaboration
This is why the resistance is so fierce. We're not just talking about another gadget or app — we're talking about the potential redistribution of human capability itself.
The Playbook Revealed
These historical examples reveal a consistent pattern:
- Disruption threatens established power — whether religious authority, economic monopolies, or institutional control
- Fear campaigns emerge — framing the new technology as dangerous, immoral, or destabilizing
- Gatekeepers mobilize — those who benefit from the status quo coordinate resistance
- Moral panic spreads — legitimate concerns get weaponized and amplified beyond reason
- Progress prevails — but only after unnecessary delays and damage
Today's Echo Chamber
Now consider the current landscape around artificial intelligence. We see familiar patterns emerging:
- Existential fear campaigns that paint AI as an inevitable destroyer of humanity
- Regulatory capture attempts by established tech giants seeking to pull up the ladder behind them
- Academic institutions defending their monopoly on certain types of knowledge work
- Media amplification of worst-case scenarios while ignoring transformative benefits
- Coordinated messaging that conflates reasonable AI safety concerns with outright technophobia
The same forces that tried to stop the printing press and alternating current are now targeting the "AI guys" — researchers and developers pushing the boundaries of machine intelligence. The tactics remain remarkably consistent across centuries: manufacture fear, claim moral authority, and paint progress as peril.
Learning from History
This doesn't mean every concern about AI is manufactured or that all criticism is illegitimate. Genuine safety considerations matter. But when we see coordinated campaigns that sound suspiciously like monks warning about printed books or Edison electrocuting elephants, we should ask: Who benefits from this fear? What power structures are being protected?
History teaches us that transformative technologies rarely arrive with perfect safety guarantees or universal approval. They arrive messy, disruptive, and threatening to someone's rice bowl. The question isn't whether AI will cause change — it's whether we'll let fear-mongering delay progress that could benefit humanity.
The printing press gave us the Renaissance. Alternating current powered the modern world. AI promises to democratize human capability in ways we're only beginning to understand. The pattern suggests that despite the panic, despite the propaganda, despite the coordinated resistance of entrenched interests, progress finds a way.
But how much faster might that progress come — and how much suffering might we avoid — if we recognized these historical patterns and refused to let empire preservation masquerade as public safety?
The future is coming whether the gatekeepers like it or not. The only question is whether we'll help build it or let others control the narrative around it.
The next time you see headlines about AI doom or calls to pause development "for safety," remember the monks who burned books and the inventor who electrocuted elephants. History has a sense of irony — and it rhymes more often than we'd like to admit.
