People consider technology normal if it predates their birth, exciting if it appears during their prime years, and threatening if it arrives in their later life.
Book: The Salmon of Doubt
Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, describes our reactions to technologies in this set of rules:
- Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
- Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary, and you can probably get a career in it.
- Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
This reminds me of the first law of Clarke's Three Laws: "When a distinguished elderly scientist states that something is possible, they are almost certainly right, but when they state something is impossible, they are probably wrong."