Comments on: The Pragmatic (Internet) Optimist’s Creed

By: Book Review: Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows

Book Review: Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 17:32:38 +0000

[...] you’d find Carr floating about there on the spectrum as well. If my own position is one of “pragmatic optimism,” you could call call his position “pragmatic skepticism”: It’s not the [...]

By: The Digital Decade’s Definitive Reading List: Internet & Info-Tech Policy Books of the 2000’s — Technology Liberation Front

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:08:24 +0000

[...] my own on Internet Optimists vs. Pessimists, something I’ve been writing a lot about here in recent [...]

By: The 10 Most Important Info-Tech Policy Books of 2009 — Technology Liberation Front

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:57:59 +0000

[...] Unlike most other Internet pessimists, however, Freeman’s tone is more measured and his recommendations more reasonable. Of course, it helps that he is magical wordsmith. Even if you find yourself disagreeing with many of his ultimate conclusions–as I did–you should read The Tyranny of E-Mail for a lesson in how to construct an argument and to appreciate the gift of fine writing. It’s easily the best tract by any Net skeptic since Nick Carr’s The Big Switch, and a much better one in many ways. It will force you to ask tough questions about the impact of the Information Age on you and the world around you. Nonetheless, I remain an unrepentant techno-optimist (albeit a pragmatic one)! [...]

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By: The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog

The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 04:11:07 +0000

review: A Better Pencil by Dennis Baron...

I very much enjoyed Dennis Baron's new book, A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution, and highly recommend you pick it up. Baron does a wonderful job exploring the history of techno-pessimism and the endless battles about the......

By: philly387

philly387 — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 01:00:28 +0000

That is quite the creed. I think it would take a very creative person to come up with that type of idea. In my opinion, it was very, very well done.
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By: “Google Bigotry,” Corporate-Bashing & Human Envy — Technology Liberation Front

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 17:38:55 +0000

[...] of the Internet and digital technology on our lives. I’m what you might call a “pragmatic Internet optimist” because I generally believe the Internet is reshaping our culture, economy, and society in [...]

By: The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog

The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 01:51:23 +0000

RFK's Peaceful Progress, JFK's New Frontier, Technological Dynamism & Pragmatic Techno-Optimism...

I've been looking for something nice to say about Ted Kennedy. I thought I found it in the eulogy he gave at his brother Robert's funeral (MP3) --only to realize that the most rousing parts of that oration were quotes......

By: RFK’s Peaceful Progress, JFK’s New Frontier, Technological Dynamism & Pragmatic Techno-Optimism — Technology Liberation Front

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:56:34 +0000

[...] by a pragmatic recognition of the challenges such change creates. As Adam Thierer declared in his Pragmatic (Internet) Optimist’s Creed: I believe that the Internet is reshaping our culture, economy, and society – in most ways for [...]

By: Can Humans Cope with Information Overload? Tyler Cowen & John Freeman Join the Debate

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 22:26:28 +0000

[...] to those who follow technology policy debates since Cowen makes a passionate case for “Internet optimism” in the face of recent criticisms of the Internet and the Information Age in [...]

By: Sweet_Home_Improvement

Sweet_Home_Improvement — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 22:29:13 +0000

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By: Sweet_Home_Improvement

Sweet_Home_Improvement — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 21:29:13 +0000

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By: The Lord’s Prayer of Internet Pessimist Orthodoxy | The Technology Liberation Front

Tue, 12 May 2009 02:24:15 +0000

[...] few months ago, Adam Thierer penned The Pragmatic (Internet) Optimist’s Creed in response to calls from “Internet pessimists” for increased regulation of the [...]

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:58:12 +0000

1) I call my view "technology-positive social criticism", but there's not a lot of support for it.

2) Richard - there does exist some empirical work. Again, not a lot of support for it, or forpublicizing it.

By: Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:06:54 +0000

I've read a lot of these social-implications-of-the-Internet books, so I see your point that they tend to fall into boosterism or pessimism camps. They also tend to rely on anecdotes rather than actual evidence to bolster their arguments, which suggests a problem to me: before we can assess the Internet's impact on society as good or bad, don't we need to understand the nature of the impact empirically? How exactly has the Internet affected journalism and publishing, for example? Are we witnessing the end of the newspaper era, or a consolidation where we're going to have three to five global news outlets who serve the entire market? In publishing, it's easy to see that the Internet as a medium for both the sale and piracy of books has put a lot of small bookshops out of business, while making a larger number of titles available. What impact has this shift toward mega-retailers like Amazon had on authors who serve small audiences?

Internet criticism takes the answers to such questions as given, but I suspect there is some empirical data to gather that might upset some the assumptions that everyone accepts without question.