The anxieties and fears themselves, however, also offer a lens through which we might be able to discover the means to ameliorate the perceived risk, providing a pathway for change. By doing so, we may avoid the scenario Alex Reid notes in his blog post on “The Desires of Teaching Writing,” in which he reflects on the “gamble” for composition associated with the choice between adopting new media technologies or not. Reid notes:

We know we don't have a realistic picture of the distant future; we know things will be quite different. We expect that we know where we will be in 5-10 years. We expect things to remain the same, or at least we expect that it is a safe bet, that no one will punish us for carrying on with business as usual. For individuals in an institutional context like this, inaction is almost always the safest bet. That is, until the hammer falls one day.

Historically our unease, or dis-ease, about new technologies (Baron, Reid) tends to disappear over time, but because digital technologies move and evolve so rapidly, we may not have as much time to avoid “the hammer” as we might need to adjust. So how do we go about understanding and addressing fears and anxieties beyond attempts to rationally explain them away?

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