The Top 5 Technology Panics of 2009

Link to December 23 h+ article. (via Slashdot)

In countdown order:

5. Exploding iPods (THE REALITY: While lithium batteries have been known to do some unpleasant things, these incidents are, on the whole, incredibly rare.)

4. Robots attack. (THE REALITY: Factory work is dangerous and it always has been, ever since the Industrial Revolution began two hundred years ago. Indeed, most workplaces have actually gotten much safer over the years.)

3. "Sexting". (THE REALITY: The vast majority of these “child pornographers” are... the teenagers themselves. Most of the photos are of themselves, their boyfriends, or their girlfriends. And the recipients of the photos are almost always the other children at school.)

2. Bombing the moon. (THE REALITY: NASA‘s “missile” isn‘t a bomb, an explosive, a nuke, or indeed anything special at all — it‘s just an old, burnt-out rocket stage without any fuel left.)

1. Flesh eating robots. (THE REALITY: After the rumors started making their way around the Internet, EATR‘s designers stepped in to clarify: the “flesh-eating robot” will consume vegetable matter only, and it comes equipped with a suite of sensors and computers to help it determine whether the things it comes across are animal, vegetable or neither.)