Cultural lag

A term coined to explain the gap that arises when changes in “material culture,” such as technology, outpace changes in “non-material culture,” such as cultural norms, and the phenomena that result from that gap. (1922, W. F. Ogburn)

When a new technology leaves gaps in existing norms, confusion arises until new norms take shape.

Examples

If you record a meeting with an AI recording app to produce minutes, should you ask the other participants for consent beforehand? What if it is an ordinary recording, without AI? What if you type notes instead of recording? Or take shorthand on paper?

(Assuming the speech-to-text module runs on a local model and no audio is sent to an outside company), there seems to be no essential difference between AI transcription and handwritten notes on paper, yet they feel quite different emotionally.

When Google first put targeted ads in the Gmail inbox, there was controversy over privacy. Since an algorithm is what “reads” the email, whether this really constitutes a privacy violation is ambiguous (Code: and other laws in cyberspace by Lawrence Lessig). In any case, it was controversial then, but now it is taken completely for granted.

Apparently, radio advertising also stirred controversy over privacy in the 1920s (The attention merchants by Tim Wu). People felt that playing commercial advertisements on a radio in the home, a private space, went too far. Yet now this, too, is taken completely for granted.