Chances are you’ve never heard of him, however. As prolific as he was, Florman did not command as much attention as the endless parade of tech critics whose apocalyptic predictions grabbed all the headlines. An engineer by training, Florman became concerned about the growing criticism of his profession throughout the 1960s and 70s. He pushed back against that impulse in a series of books over the next two decades, including most notably: The Existential Pleasures of Engineering (1976), Blaming Technology: The Irrational Search for Scapegoats (1981), and The Civilized Engineer (1987). He was also a prolific essayist, penning hundreds of articles for a wide variety of journals, magazines, and newspapers beginning in 1959. He was also a regular columnist for MIT Technology Review for sixteen years.

Florman’s primary mission in his books and many of those essays was to defend the engineering profession against attacks emanating from various corners. More broadly, as he noted in a short autobiography on his personal website, Florman was interested in discussing, “the relationship of technology to the general culture.”

Florman could be considered a “rational optimist,” to borrow Matt Ridley’s notable term [1] for those of us who believe, as I have summarized elsewhere, that there is a symbiotic relationship between innovation, economic growth, pluralism, and human betterment.[2] Rational optimists are highly pragmatic and base their optimism on facts and historical analysis, not on dogmatism or blind faith in any particular viewpoint, ideology, or gut feeling. But they are unified in the belief that technological change is a crucial component of moving the needle on progress and prosperity.

Florman’s unique contribution to advancing rational optimism came in the way he itemized the various claims made by tech critics and then powerfully debunked each one of them. He was providing other rational optimists with a blueprint for how defend technological innovation against its many critics and criticisms. As he argued in The Civilized Engineer, we need to “broaden our conception of engineering to include all technological creativity.”^[3] And then we need to defend it with vigor.

In 1982, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers appropriately awarded Florman the distinguished Ralph Coats Roe Medal for his “outstanding contribution toward a better public understanding and appreciation of the engineer’s worth to contemporary society.” Carl Sagan had won the award the previous year. Alas, Forman never attained the same degree of notoriety as Sagan. That is a shame because Florman was as much a philosopher and a historian as he was an engineer, and his robust thinking on technology and society deserves far greater attention. More generally, his plain-spoken style and straight-forward defense of technological progress continues to be a model for how to counter today’s techno-pessimists.

This essay highlights some of the most important themes and arguments found in Florman’s writing and explains its continuing relevance to the ongoing battles over technology and progress.

What Motivates The “Antitechnologists”?

Florman was interested in answering questions about what motivates both engineers as well as their critics. He dug deep into psychology and history to figure out what makes these people tick. Who are engineers, and why do they do what they do? That was his primary question, and we will turn to his answers momentarily. But he also wanted to know what drove the technology critics to oppose innovation so vociferously.

Florman’s most important contribution to the history of ideas lies in his 6-part explanation of “the main themes that run through the works of the antitechnologists.”^[4] Florman used the term “antitechnologists” to describe the many different critics of engineering and innovation. He recognized that the term wasn’t perfect and that some people he labelled as such would object to it. Nevertheless, because they offer no umbrella label for their movement or way of thinking, Florman noted that opposition to, or general discomfort with, technology was what motivated these critics. Hence, the label “antitechnologists.”

Florman surveyed a wide swath of technological critics from many different disciplines—philosophy, sociology, law, and other fields. He condensed their main criticisms into six general points:

• Technology is a “thing” or a force that has escaped from human control and is spoiling our lives.
• Technology forces man to do work that is tedious and degrading.
• Technology forces man to consume things that he does not really desire.
• Technology creates an elite class of technocrats, and so disenfranchises the masses.
• Technology cripples man by cutting him off from the natural world in which he evolved.
• Technology provides man with technical diversions which destroy his existential sense of his own being.^[5]

No one else before this had ever crafted such a taxonomy of complaints from tech critics, and no one has done it better since Florman did so in 1976. In fact, it is astonishing how well Florman’s list continues to identify what motivates modern technology critics. New technologies have come and gone, but these same concerns tend to be brought up again and again. Florman’s books addressed and debunked each of these concerns in powerful fashion.

The Relentless Pessimism & Elitism of the Antitechnologists

Florman identified the way a persistent pessimism unifies antitechnologists. “Our intellectual journals are full of gloomy tracts that depict a society debased by technology,” he noted.^[6] What motivated such gloom and doom? “It is fear. They are terrified by the scene unfolding before their eyes.”^[7] He elaborated:

“The antitechnologists are frightened; they counsel halt and retreat. They tell the people that Satan (technology) is leading them astray, but the people have heard that story before. They will not stand still for vague promises of a psychic contentment that is to follow in the wake of voluntary temperance.”^[8]

The antitechnologist’s worldview isn’t just relentlessly pessimistic but also highly elitist and paternalistic, Florman argued. He referred to it as “Platonic snobbery.”^[9] The economist and political scientist Thomas Sowell would later call that snobbish attitude, “the vision of the anointed.”[10] Like Sowell, Florman was angered at the way critics stared down their noses at average folk and disregarded their values and choices:

“The antitechnologists have every right to be gloomy, and have a bounden duty to express their doubts about the direction our lives are taking. But their persistent disregard of the average person’s sentiments is a crucial weakness in their argument—particularly when they then ask us to consider the ‘real’ satisfactions that they claim ordinary people experienced in other cultures of other times.”^[11]

Florman noted that critics commonly complain about “too many people wanting too many things,” but he noted that, “[t]his is not caused by technology; it is a consequence of the type of creature that man is.”^[12] One can moralize all they want about supposed over-consumption or “conspicuous consumption,” but in the end, most of us strive to better our lives in various ways—including by working to attain things that may be out of our reach or even superfluous in the eyes of others.

For many antitechnologists and other social critics, only the noble search for truth and wisdom will suffice. Basically, everybody should just get back to studying philosophy, sociology, and other soft sciences. Modern tech critics, Forman said, fashion themselves as the intellectual descendants of Greek philosophers who believed that, “[t]he ideal of the new Athenian citizen was to care for his body in the gymnasium, reason his way to Truth in the academy, gossip in the agora, and debate in the senate. Technology was not deemed worthy of a free man’s time.”^[13]

“It is not surprising to find philosophers recommending the study of philosophy as a way of life,” Florman noted amusingly.^[14] But that does not mean all of us want (or even need) to devote our lives to such things. Nonetheless, critics often sneer at the choices made by the rest of us—especially when they involve the fruits of science and technology. “The most effective weapon in the arsenal of the antitechnologists is self-righteousness,” he noted,^[15] and, “[a]s seen by the antitechnologists, engineers and scientists are half-men whose analysis and manipulation of the world deprives them of the emotional experiences that are the essence of the good life.”^[16]

Indeed, it is not uncommon (both in the past and today) to see tech critics self-anoint themselves “humanists” and then suggest that anyone who thinks differently from them (namely, those who are pro-innovation) are the equivalent of anti-humanistic. I wrote about this in my 2018 essay, “Is It ‘Techno-Chauvinist’ & ‘Anti-Humanist’ to Believe in the Transformative Potential of Technology?” I argued that, “[p]roperly understood, ‘technology’ and technological innovation are simply extensions of our humanity and represent efforts to continuously improve the human condition. In that sense, humanism and technology are compliments, not opposites.”

But the critics remain fundamentally hostile to that notion and they often suggest that there is something suspicious about those who believe, along with Florman, that there is a symbiotic relationship between innovation, economic growth, pluralism, and human betterment. We rational optimists, the critics suggest, are simply too focused on crass, materialistic measures of happiness and human flourishing.

Florman observed this when noting how much grief he and fellow engineers and scientists got when engaging with critics. “Anyone who has attempted to defend technology against the reproaches of an avowed humanist soon discovers that beneath all the layers of reasoning—political, environmental, aesthetic, or moral—lies a deep-seated disdain for ‘the scientific view.’”^[17]

Everywhere you look in the world of Science & Technology Studies (STS) today, you find this attitude at work. In fact, the field is perhaps better labelled Anti-Science & Technology Studies, or at least Science & Technology Skeptical Studies. For most STSers, the burden of proof lies squarely on scientists, engineers, and innovators who must prove to some (often undefined) higher authorities that their ideas and inventions will bring worth to society (however the critics measure worth and value, which is often very unclear). Until then, just go slow, the critics say. Better yet, consult your local philosophy department for a proper course of action!

The critics will retort that they are just looking out for society’s best interests and trying to counter that selfish, materialist side of humanity. Florman countered by noting how, “most people are in search of the good life—not ‘the goods life’ as [Lewis] Mumford puts it, although some goods are entailed—and most human desires are for good things in moderate amounts.”^[18] Trying to better our lives through the creation and acquisition of new and better goods and services is just a natural and quite healthy human instinct to help us attain some ever-changing definition of whatever each of us considers “the good life.” “Something other than technology is responsible for people wanting to live in a house on a grassy plot beyond walking distance to job, market, neighbor, and school,” Florman responded.^[19] We all want to “get ahead” and improve our lot in life. That’s not because technology forces the urge upon us. Rather, that urge comes quite naturally as part of a desire to improve our lot in life.

The Power of Nostalgia

I have spent a fair amount of time in my own writing documenting the central role that nostalgia plays in motivating technological criticism.[20] Florman’s books repeatedly highlighted this reality. “The antitechnologists romanticize the work of earlier times in an attempt to make it seem more appealing than work in a technological age,” he noted. “But their idyllic descriptions of peasant life do not ring true.”^[21]

The funny thing is, it is hard to pin down the critics regarding exactly when the “golden era” or “good ‘ol days” were. But if there is one thing that they all agree on, it’s that those days have long passed us by. In a 2019 essay on “Four Flavors of Doom: A Taxonomy of Contemporary Pessimism,” philosopher Maarten Boudry noted:

“In the good old days, everything was better. Where once the world was whole and beautiful, now everything has gone to ruin. Different nostalgic thinkers locate their favorite Golden Age in different historical periods. Some yearn for a past that they were lucky enough to experience in their youth, while others locate utopia at a point farther back in time…”

Not all nostalgia is bad. Clay Routledge has written eloquently about how “nostalgia serves important psychological functions,” and can sometimes possess a positive character that strengthens individuals and society. But the nostalgia found in the works of tech critics is usually a different thing altogether. It is rooted in misery about the present and dread of the future—all because technology has apparently stolen away or destroyed all that was supposedly great about the past. Florman noted how, “the current pessimism about technology is a renewed manifestation of pastoralism,” that is typically rooted in historical revisionism about bygone eras.^[22] Many critics engage in what rhetoricians call “appeals to nature” and wax poetic about the joys of life for Pre-Technological Man, who apparently enjoyed an idyllic life free of the annoying intrusions created by modern contrivances.

Such “good ol days” romanticism is largely untethered from reality. “For most of recorded history humanity lived on the brink of starvation,” Wall Street Journal columnist Greg Ip noted in a column in early 2019. Even a cursory review of history offers voluminous, unambiguous proof that the old days were, in reality, eras of abject misery. Widespread poverty, mass hunger, poor hygiene, disease, short lifespans, and so on were the norm. What lifted humanity up and improved our lot as a species is that we learned how to apply knowledge to tasks in a better way through incessant trial-and-error experimentation. Recent books by Hans Rosling,^[23] Steven Pinker,^[24] and many others^[25] have thoroughly documented these improvements to human well-being over time.

The critics are unmoved by such evidence, preferring to just jump around in time and cherry-pick moments when they feel life was better than it is now. “Fond as they are of tribal and peasant life, the antitechnologists become positively euphoric over the Middle Ages,” Florman quipped.^[26] Why? Mostly because the Middle Ages lacked the technological advances of modern times, which the critics loathe. But facts are pesky things, and as Florman insisted, “it is fair to go on to ask whether or not life was ‘better’ in these earlier cultures than it is in our own.”^[27] “We all are moved to reverie by talk of an arcadian golden age,” he noted. “But when we awaken from this reverie, we realize that the antitechnologists have diverted us with half-truths and distortions.”^[28]

The critics’ reverence for the old days would be humorous if it wasn’t rooted in an arrogant and dangerous belief that society can be somehow reshaped to resemble whatever preferred past the critics desire. “Recognizing that we cannot return to earlier times, the antitechnologists nevertheless would have us attempt to recapture the satisfactions of these vanished cultures,” Florman noted. “In order to do this, what is required is nothing less than a change in the nature of man.”^[29] That is, the critics will insist that, “something must be done” (namely be forced from above via some grand design) to remake humans and discourage their inner homo faber desire to be an incessant tool-builder. But this is madness, Florman argued in one of the best passages from his work:

“we are beginning to realize that for mankind there will never be a time to rest at the top of the mountain. There will be no new arcadian age. There will always be new burdens, new problems, new failures, new beginnings. And the glory of man is to respond to his harsh fate with zest and ever-renewed effort.”^[30]

If the critics had their way, however, that zest would be dampened and those efforts restrained in the name of recapturing some mythical lost age. This sort of “rosy retrospection bias” is all the more shocking coming, as it does, from learned people who should know a lot more about the actual history of our species and the long struggle to escape utter despair and destitution. Alas, as the great Scottish philosopher David Hume observed in a 1777 essay, “The humour of blaming the present, and admiring the past, is strongly rooted in human nature, and has an influence even on persons endued with the profoundest judgment and most extensive learning.”^[31]

Why Invent? Homo Faber is our Nature

While taking on the critics and debunking their misplaced nostalgia about the past, Florman mounted a defense of engineers and innovators by noting that the need to tinker and create is in our blood. He began by noting how “the nature of engineering has been misconceived”^[32] because, in a sense, we are all engineers and innovators to some degree.

Florman’s thinking was very much in line with Benjamin Franklin, who once noted, “man is a tool-making animal.” “Both genetically and culturally the engineering instinct has been nurtured within us,” Florman argued, and this instinct “was as old as the human race.”^[33] “To be human is to be technological. When we are being technological we are being human—we are expressing the age-old desire of the tribe to survive and prosper.”^[34] In fact, he claimed, it was no exaggeration to say that humans, “are driven to technological creativity because of instincts hardly less basic than hunger and sex.”^[35] Had our past situation been as rosy as the critics sometimes suggest, perhaps we would have never bothered to fashion tools to escape those eras! It was precisely because humans wanted to improve their lives and the lives of their loved ones that we started crafting more and better tools. Flint and firewood were never going to suffice.

But our engineering instincts do not end with basic needs. “Engineering responds to impulses that go beyond mere survival: a craving for variety and new possibilities, a feeling for proportion—for beauty—that we share with the artist,” Florman argued.^[36] In essence, engineering and innovation respond to both basic human needs and higher ones at every stage of “Maslow’s pyramid,” which describes a five-level hierarchy of human needs. This same theme is developed in Arthur Diamond’s recent book, Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. As Diamond argues, one of the most unheralded features of technological innovation is that, “by providing goods that are especially useful in pursuing a life plan full of challenging, worthwhile creative projects,” it allows each of us the pursue different conceptions of what we consider a good life.[37] But we are only able to do so by first satisfying our basic physiological needs, which innovation also handles for us.

Florman was frustrated that critics failed to understand this point and equally concerned that engineers and innovators had been cast as uncaring gadget-worshipers who did not see beauty and truth in higher arts and other more worldly goals and human values. That’s hogwash, he argued:

“What an ironic turn of events! For if ever there was a group dedicated to—obsessed with—morality, conscience, and social responsibility, it has been the engineering profession. Practically every description of the practice of engineering has stressed the concept of service to humanity.^[38] [. . .] Even in an age of global affluence, the main existential pleasure of the engineer will always be to contribute to the well-being of his fellow man.”^[39]

Engineers and innovators do not always set out with some grandiose design to change the world, although some aspire to do so. Rather, the “existential pleasures of engineering” that Florman described in the title of his most notable book comes about by solving practical day-to-day problems:

“The engineer does not find existential pleasure by seeking it frontally. It comes to him gratuitously, seeping into him unawares. He does not arise in the morning and say, ‘Today I shall find happiness.’ Quite the contrary. He arises and says, ‘Today I will do the work that needs to be done, the work for which I have been trained, the work which I want to do because in doing it I feel challenged and alive.’ Then happiness arrives mysteriously as a byproduct of his effort.”^[40]

And this pleasure of getting practical work done is something that engineers and innovators enjoy collectively by coming together and using specialized skills in new and unique combinations. “[T]echnological progress depends upon a variety of skills and knowledge that are far beyond the capacity of any one individual,” he insisted. “High civilization requires a high degree of specialization, and it was toward high civilization that the human journey appears always to have been directed.”^[41] Adam Smith could not have said it any better.

“Muddling Through”: Why Trial-and-Error is the Key to Progress

My favorite insights from Florman’s work relate to the way humans have repeatedly faced up to adversity and found ways to “muddle through.” This was the focus of an old essay of mine— “Muddling Through: How We Learn to Cope with Technological Change”—which argued that humans are a remarkably resilient species and that we regularly find creative ways to deal with major changes through constant trial-and-error experimentation and the learning that results from it.[42]

Florman made this same point far more eloquently long ago:

“We have been attempting to muddle along, acknowledging that we are selfish and foolish, and proceeding by means of trial and error. We call ourselves pragmatists. Mistakes are made, of course. Also, tastes change, so that what seemed desirable to one generation appears disagreeable to the next. But our overriding concern has been to make sure that matters of taste do not become matters of dogma, for that is the way toward violent conflict and tyranny. Trial and error, however, is exactly what the antitechnologists cannot abide.^[43]

It is the error part of trial-and-error that is so vital to societal learning. “Even the most cautious engineer recognizes that risk is inherent in what he or she does,” Florman noted. “Over the long haul the improbable becomes the inevitable, and accidents will happen. The unanticipated will occur.”[44] But “[s]ometimes the only way to gain knowledge is by experiencing failure,” he correctly observed[45] “To be willing to learn through failure—failure that cannot be hidden—requires tenacity and courage.”[46]

I’ve argued that this represents the central dividing line between innovation supporters and technology critics. The critics are so focused on risk-adverse, precautionary principle-based thinking that they simply cannot tolerate the idea that society can learn more through trial-and-error than through preemptive planning. They imagine it is possible to override that process and predetermine the proper course of action to create a safer, more stable society. In this mindset, failure is to be avoided at all costs through prescriptions and prohibitions. Innovation is to be treated as guilty until proven innocent in the hope of eliminating the error (or risk / failure) associated with trial-and-error experiments. To reiterate, this logic misses the fact that the entire point of trial-and-error is to learn from our mistakes and “fail better” next time, until we’ve solved the problem at hand entirely.[47]

Florman noted that, “sensible people have agreed that there is no free lunch; there are only difficult choices, options, and trade-offs.”[48] In other words, precautionary controls come at a cost. “All we can do is do the best we can, plan where we can, agree where we can, and compromise where we must,” he said.^[49] But, again, the antitechnologists absolutely cannot accept this worldview. They are fundamentally hostile to it because they either believe that a precautionary approach will do a better job improving public welfare, or they believe that trial-and-error fails to safeguard any number of other values or institutions that they regard as sacrosanct. This shuts down the learning process from which wisdom is generated. As the old adage goes, “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” There can be no reward without some risk, and there can be no human advances without unless we are free to learn from the error portion of trial-and-error.

The Costs of Precautionary Regulation

Florman did not spend much time in his writing mulling over the finer points of public policy, but he did express skepticism about our collective ability to define and enforce “the public interest” in various contexts. A great many regulatory regimes—and their underlying statutes—rest on the notion of “protecting the public interest.” It is impossible to be against that notion, but it is often equally impossible to define what it even means.[50]

This leads to what Florman called, “the search for virtues that nobody can define”[51] “As engineers we are agreed that the public interest is very important; but it is folly to think that we can agree on what the public interest is. We cannot even agree on the scientific facts!”^[52] This is especially true today in debates over what constitutes “responsible innovation” or “ethical innovation.”[53] What Florman noted about such conversations three decades ago is equally true today:

“Whenever engineering ethics is on the agenda, emotions come quickly to a boil. […] “It is oh so easy to mouth clichés, for example to pledge to protect the public interest, as the various codes of engineering ethics do. But such a pledge is only a beginning and hardly that. The real questions remain: What is the public interest, and how is it to be served?”[54]

That reality makes it extremely difficult to formulate consensus regarding public polices for emerging technologies. And it makes it particularly difficult to define and enforce a “precautionary principle” for emerging technologies that will somehow strike the Goldilocks balance of getting things just right. This was the focus of my 2016 book Permissionless Innovation, which argued that the precautionary principle should be the last resort when contemplating innovation policy. Experimentation with new technologies and business models should generally be permitted by default because, “living in constant fear of worst-case scenarios—and premising public policy on them—means that best-case scenarios will never come about,” I argued. The precautionary principle should only be tapped when the harms alleged to be associated with a new technology are highly probable, tangible, immediate, irreversible, catastrophic, or directly threatening to life and limb in some fashion.

For his part, Florman did not want to get his defense of engineering mixed up with politics and regulatory considerations. Engineers and technologists, he noted, come in many flavors and supported many different causes. Generally speaking, they tend to be quite pragmatic and shun strong ideological leanings and political pronouncements.

Of course, at some point, there is no avoiding this fight; one must comment on how to strike the right balance when politics enter the picture and threatens to stifle technological creativity. Florman’s perspectives on regulatory policy were somewhat jumbled, however. On one hand, he expressed concern about excessive and misguided regulations, but he also saw government playing an important role both in supporting various types of engineering projects and regulating certain technological developments:

“The regulatory impulse, running wild, wreaks havoc, first of all by stifling creative and productive forces that are vital to national survival. But it does harm also—and perhaps more ominously—by fomenting a counter-revolution among outraged industrialists, the intensity of which threatens to sweep away many of the very regulations we most need.”^[55]

In his 1987 book, The Civilized Engineer, Florman even expressed surprise and regret about growing pushback against regulation during the Reagan years. He also expressed skepticism about “the deceptive allure” of benefit-cost analysis, which was on the rise at the time, saying that the “attempt to apply mathematical consistency to the regulatory process was deplorably simplistic.”^[56] I have always been a big believer in the importance of benefit-cost analysis (BCA), so I was surprised to read of Florman’s skepticism of it. But he was writing in the early days of BCA and it was not entirely clear how well it work in practice. Four decades on, BCA has become far more rigorous, academically respected, and well-established throughout government. It has widespread and bipartisan support as a policy evaluation tool.

Florman adamantly opposed any sort of “technocracy”—or administration of government by technically-skilled elites. He thought it was silly that so many tech critics believe that such a thing already existed. “The myth of the technocratic elite is an expression of fear, like a fairy tale about ogres,” he argued. “It springs from an understandable apprehension, but since it has no basis in reality, it has no place in serious discourse.”^[57] Nor did he believe that there was any real chance a technocracy would ever take hold. “No matter how complex technology becomes, and no matter how important it turns out to be in human affairs, we are not likely to see authority vested in a class of technocrats.”^[58]

Florman hoped for wiser administration of law and regulations that affected engineering endeavors and innovation more generally. Like so many others, he did not necessarily want more law, just better law. One cannot fault that instinct, but Florman was not really interested in fleshing out the finer details of policy about how to accomplish that objective. He preferred instead to use history as a rough guide for policy. From the fall of the Roman Empire to the decline of Britain’s economic might in more recent times, Florman observed the ways in which societal and governmental attitudes toward innovation influenced the relative growth of science, technology, and national economies. In essence, he was explaining how “innovation culture” and “innovation arbitrage” had been realities for far longer than most people realize.[59]

“Where the entrepreneurial spirit cannot be rewarded, and where non-productive workers cannot be discharged, stagnation will set in,” Florman concluded.[60] This is very much in line with the thinking of economic historians like Joel Mokyr[61] and Deirdre McCloskey,[62] who have identified how attitudes toward creativity and entrepreneurialism affect the aggregate innovative capacity of nations, and thus their competitive advantage and relative prosperity in the world.

Debunking Determinism, Anxiety & Alienation Concerns

One of the ironies of modern technological criticism is the way many critics can’t seem to get their story straight when it comes to “technological determinism” versus social determinism. In the extreme view, technological determinism is the idea that technology drives history and almost has a will of its own. It is like an autonomous force that is practically unstoppable. By contrast, social determinism means that society (individuals, institutions, etc.) guide and control the development of technology.

In the field of Science and Technology Studies, technological determinism is a very hot matter. Academic and social critics are fond of painting innovation advocates as rigid tech determinists who are little better than uncaring anti-humanistic gadget-worshipers. The critics have employed a variety of other creative labels to describe tech determinism, including: “techno-fundamentalism,” “technological solutionism,” and even “techno-chauvinism.”

Engineers and other innovators often get hit with such labels and accused of being rigid technological determinists who just want to see tech plow over people and politics. But this was, and remains, a ridiculous argument. Sure, there will always be some wild-eyed futurists and extropian extremists who make preposterous claims about how “there is no stopping technology.” “Even now the salvation-through-technology doctrine has some adherents whose absurdities have helped to inspire the antitechnological movement, Florman said.”^[63] But that hardly represents the majority of innovation supporters, who well understand that society and politics play a crucial role in shaping the future course of technological development.

As Florman noted, we can dismiss extreme deterministic perspectives for a rather simple reason: technologies fail all the time! “If promising technologies can suffer fatal blows from unexpected circumstances,” Florman correctly argued, then “[t]his means that we are still—however precariously—in control of our own destiny.”[64] He believed that, “technology is not an independent force, much less a thing, but merely one of the types of activities in which people engage.”^[65] The rigid view of tech determinism can be dismissed, he said, because “it can be shown that technology is still very much under society’s control, that it is in fact an expression of our very human desires, fancies, and fears.”^[66]

But what is amazing about this debate is that some of the most rigid technological determinists are the technology critics themselves! Recall how Florman began his 6-part taxonomy of common complaints from tech critics. “A primary characteristic of the antitechnologists,” Florman argued, “is the way in which they refer to ‘technology’ as a thing, or at least a force, as if it had an existence of its own” and which “has escaped from human control and is spoiling our lives.”[67]

He noted that many of the leading tech critics of the post-war era often spoke in remarkably deterministic ways. “The idea that a man of the masses has no thoughts of his own, but is something on the order of a programmed machine, owes part of its popularity with the antitechnologists to the influential writings of Herbert Marcuse,” he believed.^[68] But then such thinking accelerated and gained greater favor with the popularity of critics like French philosopher Jacques Ellul, American historian Lewis Mumford, and American cultural critic Neil Postman.

Their books painted a dismal portrait of a future in which humans were subjugated to the evils of “technique” (Ellul), “technics” (Mumford), or “technopoly” (Postman).  The narrative of their works read like dystopian science fiction. Essentially, there was no escaping the iron grip that technology had on us. Postman claimed, for example, that technology was destined to destroy “the vital sources of our humanity” and lead to “a culture without a moral foundation” by undermining “certain mental processes and social relations that make human life worth living.”

Which gets us to commonly heard concerns about how technology leads to “anxiety” and “alienation.” “Having established the view of technology as an evil force, the antitechnologists then proceed to depict the average citizen as a helpless slave, driven by this force to perform work he detests,” Florman notes.^[69] “Anxiety and alienation are the watchwords of the day, as if material comforts made life worse, rather than better.”^[70]

These concerns about anxiety, alienation, and “dehumanization” are omnipresent in the work of modern tech critics, and they are also tied up with traditional worries about “conspicuous consumption.” It’s all part of the “false consciousness” narrative they also peddle, which basically views humans as too ignorant to look out for their own good. In this worldview, people are sheep being led to the slaughter by conniving capitalists and tech innovators, who are just trying to sell them things they don’t really need.

Florman pointed out how preposterous this line of thinking is when he noted how critics seem to always forget that, “a basic human impulse precedes and underlies each technological development”:^[71]

“Very often this impulse, or desire, is directly responsible for the new invention. But even when this is not the case, even when the invention is not a response to any particular consumer demand, the impulse is alive and at the ready, sniffing about like a mouse in a maze, seeking its fulfillment. We may regret having some of these impulses. We certainly regret giving expression to some of them. But this hardly gives us the right to blame our misfortunes on a devil external to ourselves.”^[72]

Consider the automobile, for example. Industrial era critics often focused on it and lambasted the way they thought industrialists pushed auto culture and technologies on the masses. Did we really need all those cars? All those colors? All those options? Did we really even need cars? The critics wanted us to believe that all these things were just imposed upon us. We were being force-fed options we really didn’t even need or want. “Choice” in this worldview is just a fiction; a front for the nefarious ends of our corporate overlords.

Florman demolished this reasoning throughout his books. “However much we deplore the growth of our automobile culture, clearly it has been created by people making choices, not by a runaway technology,” he argued.^[73] Consumer demand and choice is not some fiction fabricated and forced upon us, as the antitechnologists suggest. We make decisions. “Those who would blame all of life’s problems on an amorphous technology, inevitably reject the concept of individual responsibility,” Florman retorted. “This is not humanism. It is a perversion of the humanistic impulse.”^[74]

A modern tweak on the conspicuous consumption and false consciousness arguments is found in the work of leading tech critics like Evgeny Morozov, who pens attention-grabbing screeds decrying what he regards as “the folly of technological solutionism.” Morozov bluntly states that “our enemy is the romantic and revolutionary problem solver who resides within” of us, but most specifically within the engineers and technologists.[75]

But would the world really be better place it tinkerers didn’t try to scratch that itch?[76] In 2021, the Wall Street Journal profiled JoeBen Bevirt, an engineer and serial entrepreneur who has been working to bring flying cars from sci-fi to reality. Channeling Florman’s defense of the existential pleasures associated with engineering, Bevirt spoke passionately about the way innovators can help “move our species forward” through their constant tinkering to find solutions to hard problems. “That’s kind of the ethos of who we are,” he said. “We see problems, we’re engineers, we work to try to fix them.”[77]

When tech critics like Morozov decry “solutionism,” they are essentially saying that innovators like Bevirt need to just shut up and sit down. Don’t try to improve the world through tinkering; just settle for the status quo, the critics basically state. That’s the kiss of death for human progress, however, because it is only through incessant experimentation with the new and different approaches to hard problems that we can advance human well-being. “Solutionism” isn’t about just creating some shiny new toy; it’s about expanding the universe of potentially life-enriching and life-saving technologies available to humanity.

Conclusion

This review of Samuel Florman’s work may seem comprehensive, but it only scratches the surface of his wide-ranging writing. Florman was troubled that engineering lacked support or at least understanding. Perhaps that was because, he reasoned, that “[t]here is no single truth that embodies the practice of engineering, no patron saint, no motto or simple credo. There is no unique methodology that has been distilled from millenia of technological effort.”  Or, more simply, it may also be the case that the profession lacked articulate defenders. “The engineer may merely be waiting for his Shakespeare,” he suggested.^[78]

Through his life’s work, however, Samuel Florman became that Shakespeare; the great bard of engineering and passionate defender of technological innovation and rational optimism more generally. In looking for a quote or two to close out my latest book, I ended with this one from Florman:

“By turning our backs on technological change, we would be expressing our satisfaction with current world levels of hunger, disease, and privation. Further, we must press ahead in the name of the human adventure. Without experimentation and change our existence would be a dull business.”^[79]

Let us resolve to make sure that Florman’s greatest fear does not come to pass. Let us resolve to make sure that the great human adventure never ends. And let us resolve to counter the antitechnologists and their fundamentally anti-humanist worldview, which would most assuredly make our existence the “dull business” that Florman dreaded.

We can do better when we put our minds and hands to work innovating in an attempt to build a better future for humanity. Samuel Florman, the great prophet of progress, showed us the way forward.

Additional Reading from Adam Thierer:

• “How to Get the Future We Were Promised,” Discourse, January 18, 2022.
• “Defending Innovation Against Attacks from All Sides,” Discourse, November 9, 2021.
•  “Is There a Science of Progress?” AIER, August 8, 2019.
• “How Technology Expands the Horizons of Our Humanity,” Medium, November 19, 2018.
• “Is It ‘Techno-Chauvinist’ & ‘Anti-Humanist’ to Believe in the Transformative Potential of Technology?” Medium, September 18, 2018.
• “Deep Technologies & Moonshots: Should We Dare to Dream?” Medium, September 7, 2018.
• Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom, 2nd ed. (Arlington, VA: Mercatus Center at George Mason University, 2016).
• “Muddling Through: How We Learn to Cope with Technological Change,” Medium, June 30, 2014.

Endnotes:

[1]    Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (New York: Harper Collins, 2010).

[2]    Adam Thierer, “Defending Innovation Against Attacks from All Sides,” Discourse, November 9, 2021, https://www.discoursemagazine.com/ideas/2021/11/09/defending-innovation-against-attacks-from-all-sides.

[3]    Samuel C. Forman, The Civilized Engineer (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1987), p. 26.

[4]    Samuel C. Florman, The Existential Pleasures of Engineering (New York, St. Martins Griffin, 2^nd Edition, 1994), p. 53-4.

[5]    Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 53-4.

[6]    Samuel C. Florman, Blaming Technology: The Irrational Search for Scapegoats (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), p. 186.

[7]    Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 76.

[8]    Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 77.

[9]    The Civilized Engineer, p. 38.

[10]   Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy (New York: Basic Books, 1995).

[11]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 72.

[12]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 76.

[13]   The Civilized Engineer, p. 35.

[14]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 102.

[15]   Blaming Technology, p. 162.

[16]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 55.

[17]   Blaming Technology, p. 70.

[18]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 77.

[19]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 60.

[20]   Adam Thierer, “Technopanics, Threat Inflation, and the Danger of an Information Technology Precautionary Principle,” Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology 14, no. 1 (2013), p. 312–50, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2012494.

[21]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 62.

[22]   Blaming Technology, p. 9.

[23]   Hans Rosling, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong about the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think (New York: Flatiron Books, 2018).

[24]   Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (New York: Viking, 2018).

[25]   Gregg Easterbrook, It’s Better than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear (New York: Public Affairs, 2018); Michael A. Cohen & Micah Zenko, Clear and Present Safety: The World Has Never Been Better and Why That Matters to Americans (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019).

[26]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 54.

[27]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 72.

[28]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 72.

[29]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 55.

[30]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 117.

[31]   David Hume, “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” (1777), https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hume-essays-moral-political-literary-lf-ed.

[32]   The Civilized Engineer, p. 20.

[33]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 6.

[34]   The Civilized Engineer, p. 20.

[35]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 115.

[36]   The Civilized Engineer, p. 20.

[37]   Arthur Diamond, Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

[38]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 19.

[39]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 147.

[40]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 148.

[41]   The Civilized Engineer, p. 30.

[42]   Adam Thierer, “Muddling Through: How We Learn to Cope with Technological Change,” Medium, June 30, 2014, https://medium.com/tech-liberation/muddling-through-how-we-learn-to-cope-with-technological-change-6282d0d342a6.

[43]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 84.

[44]   The Civilized Engineer, p. 71.

[45]   The Civilized Engineer, p. 72.

[46]   The Civilized Engineer, p. 72.

[47]   Adam Thierer, “Failing Better: What We Learn by Confronting Risk and Uncertainty,” in Sherzod Abdukadirov (ed.), Nudge Theory in Action: Behavioral Design in Policy and Markets (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016): 65-94.

[48]   The Civilized Engineer, p. xi.

[49]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 85.

[50]   Adam Thierer, “Is the Public Served by the Public Interest Standard?” The Freeman, September 1, 1996,  https://fee.org/articles/is-the-public-served-by-the-public-interest-standard.

[51]   The Civilized Engineer, p. 84.

[52]   The Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 22.

[53]   Adam Thierer, “Are ‘Permissionless Innovation’ and ‘Responsible Innovation’ Compatible?” Technology Liberation Front, July 12, 2017, https://techliberation.com/2017/07/12/are-permissionless-innovation-and-responsible-innovation-compatible.

[54]   The Civilized Engineer, p. 79.

[55]   Blaming Technology, p. 106.

[56]   The Civilized Engineer, p. 158.

[57]   Blaming Technology, p. 41.

[58]   Blaming Technology, p. 40-1.

[59]   Adam Thierer, “Embracing a Culture of Permissionless Innovation,” Cato Online Forum, November 17, 2014, https://www.cato.org/publications/cato-online-forum/embracing-culture-permissionless-innovation; Christopher Koopman, “Creating an Environment for Permissionless Innovation,” Testimony before the US Congress Joint Economic Committee, May 22, 2018, https://www.mercatus.org/publications/creating-environment-permissionless-innovation.

[60]   The Civilized Engineer, p. 117.

[61]   Joel Mokyr, Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

[62]   Deirdre N. McCloskey, The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006); Deirdre N. McCloskey, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 2010).

[63]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 57.

[64]   Blaming Technology, p. 22.

[65]   The Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 58.

[66]   Blaming Technology, p. 10.

[67]   The Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 48, 53.

[68]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 70.

[69]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 49.

[70]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 16.

[71]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 61.

[72]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 61.

[73]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 60.

[74]   Blaming Technology, p. 104.

[75]   Evgeny Morozov, To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism (New York: Public Affairs, 2013).

[76]   Adam Thierer, “A Net Skeptic’s Conservative Manifesto,” Reason, April 27, 2013, https://reason.com/2013/04/27/a-net-skeptics-conservative-manifesto-2/.

[77]   Emily Bobrow, “JoeBen Bevirt Is Bringing Flying Taxis from Sci-Fi to Reality,” Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/joeben-bevirt-is-bringing-flying-taxis-from-sci-fi-to-reality-11625848177.

[78]   Existential Pleasures of Engineering, p. 96.

[79]   Blaming Technology, p. 193.

I really liked this new essay, “Innovation is thriving in the fight against Covid-19,” by Norman Lewis over at Spiked, a UK-based publication. In it, he makes several important points similar to themes discussed in my book launch essay last week (“Evasive Entrepreneurialism and Technological Civil Disobedience in the Midst of a Pandemic.”) Lewis begins by noting that:

There is nothing like a crisis to concentrate the mind. And the Covid-19 catastrophe has certainly done this. It has speeded up latent trends and posed new questions. The issue of our technologically informed capacity to solve problems is just one example.

He continues on to argue:

a crisis like Covid-19 will necessarily pose new urgent questions that could not have been anticipated. New initiatives will rise to meet these. Pre-existing skills, knowledge, technologies and attitudes will always be the starting point of new problem-solving quests. Where and how we focus attention will, in part, be based on prior cultural assumptions and existing technologies, and also on the novelty of the problem to be solved.

Lewis discusses how innovative minds are pushing back against archaic regulatory barriers, business models and government regulations. As he nicely summarizes:

Unimagined solutions are being pushed while a more open attitude towards experimentation, risk-taking and side-stepping onerous and costly regulation is starting to emerge. Human needs are breaking down yesterday’s precautionary approaches.

That last line really resonated with me because it’s a major theme that runs throughout my new book, “Evasive Entrepreneurs and the Future of Governance: How Innovation Improves Economies and Governments.” As I summarized in my book launch essay:

Eventually, people take notice of how regulators and their rules encumber entrepreneurial activities, and they act to evade them when public welfare is undermined. Working around the system becomes inevitable when the permission society becomes so completely dysfunctional and counterproductive.

This was happening before the coronavirus outbreak, but the crisis has supercharged this phenomenon. Evasive entrepreneurs are taking advantage of the growth of new devices and platforms that let citizens circumvent (or perhaps just ignore) public policies that limit innovative efforts. These can include common tools like smartphones, computers, and various new interactive platforms, as well as more specialized technologies like cryptocurrencies, private drones, immersive technologies (like virtual reality), 3D printers, the “Internet of Things,” and sharing economy platforms and services. But that list just scratches the surface and the public is increasingly using these new technological capabilities to assert themselves and push back against laws and regulations that defy common sense and hold back progress.

Lawmakers and regulators need to consider a balanced response to evasive entrepreneurialism that is rooted in the realization that technology creators and users are less likely to seek to evade laws and regulations when public policies are more in line with common sense. Yesterday’s heavy-handed approaches that are rooted in the Precautionary Principle will need to be reformed to make sure progress can happen. 

Read my book to find out more!

In a new essay for the Mercatus Bridge, I ask, “How Many Lives Are Lost Due to the Precautionary Principle?” The essay builds on two recent case studies of how the precautionary principle can result in unnecessary suffering and deaths. The first case study involves the Japanese government’s decision in 2011 to entirely abandon nuclear energy following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. The second involves Golden Rice, a form of rice that was genetically engineered to contain beta-carotene, which helps combat vitamin A deficiency. Anti-GMO resistance among environmental activists and regulatory officials held up the diffusion of this miracle food. New reports and books now document how these precautionary decisions diminished human welfare instead of improving it. I encourage you to jump over to the Bridge and read the entire story.

I concluded the essay by noting that, “It is time to reject the simplistic logic of the precautionary principle and move toward a more rational, balanced approach to the governance of technologies. Our lives and well-being depend upon it.” Some read that as a complete rejection of  all preemptive regulation. I certainly was not arguing that, so let me clarify a few things.

There are, of course, “hard” and “soft” variants of the precautionary principle (PP). In my new essay, I am mostly focused on the very hardest variety (of a prohibitionary nature). They are the most concerning because they completely foreclose all future experimentation with new and better ways of doing things. In a section of my last book entitled, “When Does Precaution Make Sense?” I noted that outright bans on new goods and services are justified when the risk being evaluated can be shown to be highly probably, tangible, immediate, irreversible, and potentially catastrophic in nature. [See this essay for more on this point, including that entire section of my book reprinted as an appendix.]

However, “existential” risks are open to interpretation and far rarer than some suggest. Governments justly restrict the possession of uranium and bazookas and such grounds, but it would be imprudent to ban the development of all new AI technologies on the theory that one day we might get a Terminator scenario if we don’t.

Softer PP varieties of a permitting nature (such as FAA and FDA permitting regimes) are somewhat easier to justify because they at least leave the door open for some innovation, albeit after significant delay. It is impossible in advance to determine exactly how many lives are saved or lost because of long regulatory review processes, but some new products (such as large aircraft or pharmaceuticals) obviously deserve greater scrutiny because of the potential for adverse and catastrophic outcomes without some degree of initial oversight.

However, taken to the extreme and applied in too rigid of a fashion, even softer varieties of the PP can result in unnecessary suffering and deaths. Slowing experiments with potentially new and better ways of doing things means we are stuck with a status quo that can be sub-optimal, even deadly in its own right.

All roads lead back to improved benefit-cost analysis, better risk modeling, constant retrospective review, and stepped-up risk education/communication efforts. But the over-zealous and unthinking application of the PP shuts down that process almost entirely and forecloses any sort of policy or market experimentation. Flexibility, adaptability, and humility in policymaking are crucial to avoid policy errors.

Toward that end, as I noted in my last law review article, newer “soft law” governance tools offer us the chance to craft superior governance frameworks for existing and emerging technologies. Multistakeholder processes, agency guidances, collaborative best practices, and various other informal governance mechanisms are often better suited to address fast-moving sectors and technologies. In my next book, I argue that this is even true for many “existential risk” scenarios that people fear today. Preemptive controls – including some of a precautionary nature – will still be needed in many circumstances. (Genetic editing will be one such candidate). But we must still guard against overreaction and excessive control of technologies that have the potential to fundamentally improve human well-being.

In sum, trial-and-error is valuable both in the marketplace and in government policymaking settings. The fundamental problem with the precautionary principle is that is ends all such trial-and-error experimentation, including within regulatory regimes themselves! Greater flexibility is needed to ensure that public policy can more accurately balance risk and benefits and improve human well-being as a result. But the precautionary principle will almost never achieve that. We need more open, adaptive, and entrepreneurial governance mechanisms to achieve superior public health outcomes.

My next book, due out in April 2020, does a deeper dive into these issues. Stay tuned for more.

[originally posted on Medium ]

Today is the anniversary of the day the machines took over.

Exactly twenty years ago today, on May 11, 1997, the great chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov became the first chess world champion to lose a match to a supercomputer. His battle with IBM’s “Deep Blue” was a highly-publicized media spectacle, and when he lost Game 6 of his match against the machine, it shocked the world.

At the time, Kasparov was bitter about the loss and even expressed suspicions about how Deep Blue’s team of human programmers and chess consultants might have tipped the match in favor of machine over man. Although he still wonders about how things went down behind the scenes during the match, Kasparov is no longer as sore as he once was about losing to Deep Blue. Instead, Kasparov has built on his experience that fateful week in 1997 and learned how he and others can benefit from it.

The result of this evolution in his thinking is Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins, a book which serves as a paean to human resiliency and our collective ability as a species to adapt in the face of technological disruption, no matter how turbulent.

Kasparov’s book serves as the perfect antidote to the prevailing gloom-and-doom narrative in modern writing about artificial intelligence (AI) and smart machines. His message is one of hope and rational optimism about future in which we won’t be racing against the machines but rather running alongside them and benefiting in the process.

Overcoming the Technopanic Mentality

There is certainly no shortage of books and articles being written today about AI, robotics, and intelligent machines. The tone of most of these tracts is extraordinarily pessimistic. Each page is usually dripping with dystopian dread and decrying a future in which humanity is essentially doomed.

As I noted in a recent essay about “The Growing AI Technopanic,” after reading through most of these books and articles, one is left to believe that in the future: “Either nefarious-minded robots enslave us or kill us, or AI systems treacherously trick us, or at a minimum turn our brains to mush.” These pessimistic perspectives are clearly on display within the realm of fiction, where every sci-fi book, movie, or TV show depicts humanity as certain losers in the proverbial “race” against machines. But such lugubrious lamentations are equally prevalent within the pages of many non-fiction books, academic papers, editorials, and journalistic articles.

Given the predominantly panicky narrative surrounding the age of smart machines, Kasparov’s Deep Thinking serves as a welcome breath of fresh air. The aim of his book is finding ways of “doing a smarter job of humans and machines working together” to improve well-being.

Chess fans will enjoy Kasparov’s overview of the history of the game as well as his discussion of how the development of computing and smart machines has been intermingled with chess for many decades now. They will also appreciate his detailed postmortem of his losing battle with Deep Blue, which makes up the meat of the middle of the book. But what is important about the book is the way Kasparov draws out lessons about how the game of chess and chess players themselves have adapted to the rise of smart machines over time — just as he had to following his historic loss to Deep Blue.

Kasparov begins by noting that the growing panic over machine-learning and AI is unwarranted, but in another sense entirely unsurprising. He correctly observes that, “doomsaying has always been a popular pastime when it comes to new technology” and that, “With every new encroachment of machines, the voices of panic and doubt are heard, and they are only getting louder today.”

Fears of sectoral disruptions and job displacements are nothing new, of course, and many of them have even proven legitimate, Kasparov notes. He discusses “a pattern that has repeated over and over for centuries,” in which humans initially scoffed at the idea of machines being able to compete with them. “Eventually we have had to concede that there is no physical labor that couldn’t be replicated, or mechanically surpassed.” That includes the game of chess, where smart machines are now superior to the world’s best players.

But that doesn’t mean we can or should stop the progression of machine intelligence, he says, because the history of humanity is fundamentally tied up with the never-ending process of technological improvements and the gradual assimilation of new tools into our lives, jobs, and economy. He argues:

“Every profession will eventually feel this pressure, and it must, or else it will mean humanity has ceased to make progress. We can either see these changes as a robotic hand closing around our necks or one that can lift us up higher than we can reach on our own, as has always been the case. Romanticizing the loss of jobs to technology is little better than complaining that antibiotics put too many grave diggers out of work.”

That is why it is essential, Kasparov argues, that we not waste time trying to avoid these changes altogether. He regards the very idea of it as an exercise in futility. “Fighting to thwart the impact of machine intelligence is like lobbying against electricity or rockets,” he says. Instead, he argues, we must look to adapt, and do so quickly.

Adaptation, Resiliency & Risk-Taking

In that sense, Kasparov suggests that there are lessons for us in the history of chess as well as from his own experience competing against Deep Blue. He notes that his match against IBM’s supercomputer, “was symbolic of how we are in a strange competition both with and against our creation in more ways every day.”

Instead of just throwing our hands up in the air in frustration, we must be willing to embrace the new and unknown — especially AI and machine-learning. “Each of us has a choice to make: to embrace these new challenges, or to resist them.” His consistent plea throughout the book is to not give into to our worst fears, but instead to embrace these new technological challenges with a willingness to try new ways of doing things. “No matter how many people are worried about jobs, or the social structure, or killer machines, we can never go back,” he concludes.

On that point, my favorite passage in his book comes early in a short chapter about the history of chess. Kasparov’s sagacious advice is worth quoting at length:

“The willingness to keep trying new things — different methods, uncomfortable tasks — when you are already an expert at something is what separates good from great. Focusing on your strengths is required for peak performance, but improving your weaknesses has the potential for the greatest gains. This is true for athletes, executives, and entire companies. Leaving your comfort zone involves risk, however, and when you are already doing well the temptation to stick with the status quo can be overwhelming, leading to stagnation.”

Societal attitudes toward risk-taking and disruption matter profoundly in this regard because “our perspective on disruption affects how well prepared for it we will be” for the future. Again, the lessons from the world of chess are clear: “How professional chess changed when computers and databases arrived is a useful metaphor for how new technology is adopted across industries and societies in general.” For modern chess players, “it was a matter of adapting to survive,” he argues. “Those who quickly mastered the new methods thrived; the few who didn’t mostly dropped down the rating lists.”

 

Disrupting Education

Kasparov is particularly concerned about how a deep underlying conservatism and resistance to experimentation has become a chronic problem within the traditional educational system. “The prevailing attitude is that education is too important to take risks. My response is that education is too important not to take risks,” he says.

He again returns to the world of chess and he speaks with excitement about the ways in which young chess prodigies are tapping computers and sophisticated programs to supplement their skill-building. They do this, Kasparov says, even though they often receive little encouragement from the older guard, who often still resist the new methods of learning. “We need to find out what works and the only way to do that is to experiment,” he argues. “The kids can handle it. They are already doing it on their own. It’s the adults who are afraid.”

He’s also bullish on the globalization of these trends and the way in which “technology will enable people from all over the world to become entrepreneurs, or scientists, or anything they want despite where they live.” Kasparov believes this is already happening within the global chess community as new computing technologies help players everywhere raise the level of their skills. “Kids are capable of learning far more, far faster, than tradition educational methods allow for,” he argues. “They are already doing it mostly on their own, living and playing in a far more complex environment than the one their parents grew up in.”

Problems Ahead

Kasparov isn’t blind to the potential problems associated with new technologies, including AI and algorithmic systems. The potential for privacy violations represents one of the major concerns related to our powerful new technological capabilities. “There are countless privacy issues to be negotiated anytime [personal] data is accessed, of course, and that trade-off will continue to be one of the main battlefields of the AI revolution.”

Kasparov says he is “glad privacy advocates are on the job, especially regarding the powers of the government,” yet he also senses that we are our own worst enemies because new digital technologies and AI-enabled systems “will continue to make the benefits of sharing our data practically irresistible.” “Utility always wins,” he argues, and even if one country seeks to clamp down on innovation, others will welcome it. “When the results come back and show that the economic and health benefits are tremendous, the floodgates will open everywhere.”

He is probably right. After all, as I have noted in recent essays, we increasingly live in a world where “global innovation arbitrage” — i.e., the increasingly frictionless movement of innovations to jurisdictions that provide a legal and regulatory environment more hospitable to entrepreneurial activity — is increasingly easy. We already know how challenging it is to control data flows in the age of the Internet, smartphones, and social media. But the combination of more sophisticated forms of machine-learning and the rise of innovation arbitrage opportunities means that formidable challenges lie ahead in terms of digital privacy and cybersecurity.

Other ethical issues will need to be worked out over time, but it is important not to imbue new AI technologies or automated systems with too much moral weight right out of the gates. “Our technology is not concerned about good or evil. It is agnostic,” Kasparov correctly notes. The real question, he says, is how we ourselves put our tools to use. “The ethics are in how we humans use it, not whether we should build it.”

Humility about the Future

Despite some concerns such as these, Kasparov is generally quite bullish about the future of humanity in an age of smart machines. Again, his core message is that, “going backwards isn’t an option” and that “it is almost always better to start looking for alternatives and how to advance the change into something better instead of trying to fight it and hold on to the dying status quo.”

He agrees with many other pundits that new skills and jobs will be needed going forward, but admits they aren’t always easy to plan for in advance. As Yogi Berra once famously said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Indeed, as I pointed out in the most recent edition of my book Permissionless Innovation, when one looks back at official government labor market studies and forecasts from the 1970s and 1980s, you are struck by the way in which policymakers didn’t even have a vocabulary to describe the jobs and skills of the present. For example, you find no mention in past reports of some of today’s hottest jobs, such as software engineers and architects, UX designers, database scientists and administrators, and so on.

On one hand, therefore, pessimistic pundits and policymakers regularly underestimate the adaptability of workers and the evolution of new skills and professions. On the other hand, they make an equally egregious mistake when they overestimate the impact of technological change on many sectors and professions, or suggest that mass unemployment is just around the corner unless we slow automation down.

Just this week, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation released a new report on the impact of technological disruption in the U.S. labor market from 1850 to present and decried the “false alarmism” often on display in debates about current and future skills and professions. “Labor market disruption is not abnormally high,” conclude authors Robert D. Atkinson and John Wu, but instead, “it’s occurring at its lowest rate since the Civil War.”

We’ve been through more turbulent labor market disruptions in the past and weathered the storm. Chances are we will do so again, so long as we embrace the potential for that change to improve our lives and economy in the long-term. “In fact,” conclude Atkinson and Wu, “the single biggest economic challenge facing advanced economies today is not too much labor market churn, but too little, and thus too little productivity growth.” This is consistent with Kasparov’s repeated call in Deep Thinking for us not to give in to our fears about a highly uncertain future but to instead embrace its potential. “Our machines will continue to make us healthier and richer as we use them wisely,” he says, while adding, “They will also make us smarter.”

Learning by Doing

What Kasparov is really doing throughout the book is making the case for building human and institutional resiliency through a constant willingness to experiment and learn through trial and error. It is certainly true that many of today’s skillsets, professions, and business models will be challenged by the rise of smarter machines and algorithmic learning. Defeatism in the face of that prospect, however, isn’t the answer; adaptation is.

Boston University economist James Bessen wrote about this process in his new book, Learning by Doing. Bessen argued that periods of profound technological change require a willingness by workers, businesses, and other institutions to adjust to new marketplace realities. For progress to occur, large numbers of ordinary workers must acquire new knowledge and skills. However, “that is a slow and difficult process, and history suggests that it often requires social changes supported by accommodating institutions and culture,” Bessen notes.

Luckily, history also suggests that we have been through this process many times before and can get through it again — and raise the standard of living for workers and average citizens alike over the long-run. The crucial part of that process is a general willingness to continue to experiment with new ways of doing things — i.e., learning by doing — and understanding that new skills and professions will emerge from all that process.

That is essentially the same point Kasparov makes in Deep Thinking. As he summarized in a new podcast conversation with Tyler Cowen:

“There will be redistribution of jobs. Many jobs today — like drone operators or 3D printer managers or social media managers — they didn’t exist 10 years ago, 15 years ago. No doubt in 10, 15 years, there will be many jobs, maybe the best-paid jobs, that don’t exist today, and we don’t even know how these jobs will look. I think that’s natural. All we have to do is realize that this process is inevitable, and we have to prepare us mentally, but also to have some sort of safety cushions to help people that will have great difficulty in adjusting.”

What about more specific public policy solutions? Considering the unclear future that lies ahead, flexibility and plenty of policy experimentation will be crucial to finding and unlocking new methods that could help us cope and adapt in the new world. “The problem comes when the government is inhibiting innovation with overregulation and short-sighted policy,” Kasparov says. Trade wars and restrictive immigration policies won’t help matters either, he argues, because they “will limit America’s ability to attract the best and brightest minds.” Hopefully the Trump Administration is listening to his advice in this regard.

AI skeptics and other technology critics will lament Kasparov’s lack of greater detail and the absence of a more precise blueprint for helping workers and institutions navigate an uncertain future. But, again, the entire point of Kasparov’s book is that there is enormous value in the very act of confronting those new challenges, learning through trial-and-error(including the many accompanying failures), and “muddling through” over time.

Much like looking out over the chessboard and pondering the wisdom of our next move, we cannot be frozen into inaction because of fear. We must be willing to make that next move. And then another, and another. And then we must learn from our experiences, and especially our mistakes, if we hope to prosper. “To keep ahead of the machines, we must not try to slow them down because that slows us down as well,” Kasparov concludes in his closing chapter. “We must speed them up. We must give them, and ourselves, plenty of room to grow. We must go forward, outward, and upward.”

Wise advice from the greatest of all grandmasters.

I recently finished  Learning by Doing: The Real Connection between Innovation, Wages, and Wealth , by James Bessen of the Boston University Law School. It’s a good book to check out if you are worried about whether workers will be able to weather this latest wave of technological innovation.  One of the key insights of Bessen’s book is that, as with previous periods of turbulent technological change, today’s workers and businesses will obviously need find ways to adapt to rapidly-changing marketplace realities brought on by the Information Revolution, robotics, and automated systems.

That sort of adaptation takes time, but for technological revolutions to take hold and have meaningful impact on economic growth and worker conditions, it requires that large numbers of ordinary workers acquire new knowledge and skills, Bessen notes. But, “that is a slow and difficult process, and history suggests that it often requires social changes supported by accommodating institutions and culture.” (p 223) That is not a reason to resist disruptive forms of technological change, however. To the contrary, Bessen says, it is crucial to allow ongoing trial-and-error experimentation and innovation to continue precisely because it represents a learning process which helps people (and workers in particular) adapt to changing circumstances and acquire new skills to deal with them. That, in a nutshell, is “learning by doing.” As he elaborates elsewhere in the book:

Major new technologies become ‘revolutionary’ only after a long process of learning by doing and incremental improvement. Having the breakthrough idea is not enough. But learning through experience and experimentation is expensive and slow. Experimentation involves a search for productive techniques: testing and eliminating bad techniques in order to find good ones. This means that workers and equipment typically operate for extended periods at low levels of productivity using poor techniques and are able to eliminate those poor practices only when they find something better. (p. 50)

Luckily, however, history also suggests that, time and time again, that process has happened and the standard of living for workers and average citizens alike improved at the same time.

Of course, that won’t stop some from proclaiming that,  This time it’s different! Indeed, we’re hearing increasing concerns today about the “rise of the robots,” and the general negative impact of automation on the workforce.

But these concerns are really nothing new. “There have been periodic warnings in the last two centuries that automation and new technology were going to wipe out large numbers of middle class jobs,” notes MIT economist David H. Autor. Luckily, those dire predictions have not come to pass. The reason was because short-sighted skeptics failed to appreciate how as new technologies obliterated old businesses and jobs, it simultaneously opened up many more opportunities that were impossible to predict in advance. For every factory worker that lost a job due to technological innovation, new jobs opened up in entirely new sectors that usually offered workers better wages, a safer work environment, and more leisure time. And society clearly benefited in many other ways.

In a new essay for  The Journal of Economic Perspectives on “The History of Technological Anxiety and the Future of Economic Growth: Is This Time Different?” Joel Mokyr, Chris Vickers, and Nicolas L. Ziebarth, note that “Discussions of how technology may affect labor demand are often focused on existing jobs, which can offer insights about which occupations may suffer the greatest dislocation, but offer much less insight about the emergence of as-yet-nonexistent occupations of the future.” They continue on to note that:

In the end, the fears of the Luddites that machinery would impoverish workers were not realized, and the main reason is well understood. The mechanization of the early 19th century could only replace a limited number of human activities. At the same time, technological change increased the demand for other types of labor that were complementary to the capital goods embodied in the new technologies. This increased demand for labor included such obvious jobs as mechanics to fix the new machines, but it extended to jobs for supervisors to oversee the new factory system and accountants to manage enterprises operating on an unprecedented scale. More importantly, technological progress also took the form of product innovation, and thus created entirely new sectors for the economy, a development that was essentially missed in the discussions of economists of this time.

And despite a resurgence of automation anxiety in recent years, that historic trend still generally holds true. In late 2014, economists at Deloitte LLP published a sweeping survey of the impact of technology and jobs over the past 200 years and found that “Technology has transformed productivity and living standards, and, in the process, created new employment in new sectors.” This is because human needs and wants constantly change and, therefore, “The stock of work in the economy is not fixed; the last 200 years demonstrates that when a machine replaces a human, the result, paradoxically, is faster growth and, in time, rising employment.” And they conclude that: “Machines will take on more repetitive and laborious tasks, but seem no closer to eliminating the need for human labour than at any time in the last 150 years. It is not hard to think of pressing, unmet needs even in the rich world: the care of the elderly and the frail, lifetime education and retraining, health care, physical and mental well-being.”

While it is easy for critics to highlight disruptions in some notable sectors where machines replaced human labor, fewer news reports or panicky books discuss the many new sectors where people have found new opportunities. Again, the historical evidence suggests that there are good reasons to have faith that humans will once again muddle through and prevail in the face of turbulent, disruptive change. As venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has noted when addressing the fear that automation is running amuck and that robots will eat all our jobs,

We have no idea what the fields, industries, businesses, and jobs of the future will be. We just know we will create an enormous number of them. Because if robots and AI replace people for many of the things we do today, the new fields we create will be built on the huge number of people those robots and AI systems made available. To argue that huge numbers of people will be available but we will find nothing for them (us) to do is to dramatically short human creativity. And I am way long human creativity.

Some tech critics may reject Andreessen’s bullish optimism about human resiliency, but real-world evidence already supports that his conclusion that we’ll learn to adapt to a world full of robots and robotic systems. A 2015 economic analysis from Colin Lewis, a behavioral economist who runs Robotenomics, showed that “despite the headlines, companies that have installed industrial robots are actually increasingly employing more people whilst at the same time adding more robots.” His research revealed that 1.25 million new jobs had been added by companies that make extensive use of industrial robots over the previous 6 years. He also found that this trend held among more recent disruptive firms like Amazon and Tesla Motors, but also older and more established companies like Chrysler, Daimler, Philips Electronics and others.

So, it’s worth keeping these facts in mind next time you read an article or book that declares that the sky is falling and that technological innovation is going to destroy labor markets and living standards. The entirety of human history points in the opposite direction. We should be bullish about our ability to muddle through tough times of technological change and flourish in the long run.

In my previous essay, I discussed a new white paper by my colleague Robert Graboyes, Fortress and Frontier in American Health Care, which examines the future of medical innovation. Graboyes uses the “fortress vs frontier” dichotomy to help explain different “visions” about how public policies debates about technological innovation in the health care arena often play out.  It’s a terrific study that I highly recommend for all the reasons I stated in my previous post.

As I was reading Bob’s new report, I realized that his approach shared much in common with a couple of other recent innovation policy paradigms I have discussed here before from Virginia Postrel (“Stasis” vs. “Dynamism”), Robert D. Atkinson (“Preservationists” vs. “Modernizers”), and myself (“Precautionary Principle” vs. “Permissionless Innovation”). In this essay, I will briefly relate Bob’s’ approach to those other three innovation policy paradigms and then note a deficiency with our common approaches. I’ll conclude by briefly discussing another interesting framework from science writer Joel Garreau.

Stasis vs. Dynamism – Virginia Postrel (1998)

In her 1998 book, The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel contrasted the conflicting worldviews of “dynamism”and “stasis” and showed how the tensions between these two visions would affect the course of future human progress. Postrel made the case for embracing dynamism — “a world of constant creation, discovery, and competition” — over the “regulated, engineered world” of the stasis mentality. She argued that we should “see technology as an expression of human creativity and the future as inviting” and reject the idea “that progress requires a central blueprint.” Dynamism defines progress as “a decentralized, evolutionary process” in which mistakes aren’t viewed as permanent disasters but instead as “the correctable by-products of experimentation.” (p. xiv)

Postrel argued that our dynamic modern world and the amazing technologies that drive it have united diverse “stasis”-minded forces in opposition to its continued, unfettered evolution:

[It] has united two types of stasists who would have once been bitter enemies: reactionaries, whose central value is stability, and technocrats, whose central value is control. Reactionaries seek to reverse change, restoring the literal or imagined past and holding it in place. . . . Technocrats, for their part, promise to manage change, centrally directing “progress” according to a predictable plan. . . . They do not celebrate the primitive or traditional. Rather, they worry about the government’s inability to control dynamism. (p. 7-8)

Preservationists vs. Modernizers – Robert D. Atkinson (2004)

Robert D. Atkinson, President, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, presented another useful way of looking at innovation policy divides in his 2004 book, The Past and Future of America’s Economy. In Chapter 6 on “The New Economy and Its Discontents,” Atkinson noted how “American history is rife with resistance to change,” as he recounted some of the heated battles over previous industrial / technological revolutions. He argued:

This conflict between stability and progress, security and prosperity, dynamism and stasis, has led to the creation of a major political fault line in American politics. On one side are those who welcome the future and look at the New Economy as largely positive. On the other are those who resist change and see only the risks of new technologies and the New Economy.  As a result, a political divide is emerging between preservationists who want to hold onto the past and modernizers who recognize that new times require new means. (p. 201)

Precautionary Principle vs. Permissionless Innovation – Adam Thierer (2014)

In my latest book, “Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom,” I argued that the central fault line in almost all modern technology policy debates revolves around “the permission question,” which asks: Must the creators of new technologies seek the blessing of public officials before they develop and deploy their innovations? I argued that we are today witnessing a grand clash of visions between two competing mindsets about how that question should be answered for a wide variety of new inventions:

One disposition is known as the “precautionary principle.” Generally speaking, it refers to the belief that new innovations should be curtailed or disallowed until their developers can prove that they will not cause any harms to individuals, groups, specific entities, cultural norms, or various existing laws, norms, or traditions.

The other vision can be labeled “permissionless innovation.” It refers to the notion that experimentation with new technologies and business models should generally be permitted by default. Unless a compelling case can be made that a new invention will bring serious harm to society, innovation should be allowed to continue unabated and problems, if they develop at all, can be addressed later.

Fortress vs. Frontier – Robert Graboyes (2014)

In his new white paper, Fortress and Frontier in American Health Care, Robert Graboyes seeks to reframe the debate over the future of health care innovation in terms of “Fortress versus Frontier” and to highlight what lessons we can learn from the Internet and the Information Revolution that can better inform health care policy. Graboyes defines “Fortress and Frontier” as follows:

The Fortress is an institutional environment that aims to obviate risk and protect established producers (insiders) against competition from newcomers (outsiders). The Frontier, in contrast, tolerates risk and allows outsiders to compete against established insiders. . . .  The Fortress-Frontier divide does not correspond neatly with the more familiar partisan or ideological divides. Framing health care policy issues in this way opens the door for a more productive national health care discussion and for unconventional policy alliances. (p. 4)

He elaborates in more detail later in the paper:

the Frontier encourages creative destruction and disruptive innovation. Undreamed-of products arise and old, revered ones vanish. New production processes sweep away old ones. This is a place where unknown innovators in garages destroy titans of industry. The Frontier celebrates and rewards risk, and there is a brutal egalitarianism to the creative process. In contrast, the Fortress discourages creative destruction and disruptive innovation. Insiders are protected from competition by government or by private organizations (such as insurers and medical societies) acting in quasigovernmental fashion. In the Fortress, insiders preserve the existing order. Innovation comes from well-established, credentialed insiders who, it is presumed, have the wisdom and motives and competence to identify opportunities for innovation. (p. 13)

The Common Themes

There are several themes that unify these four frameworks. Most notably, they all seek to escape the traditional “Left vs. Right,” “Conservative vs. Liberal,” and “Democrat vs. Republican” labels and models. Postrel’s book noted that, although there are differences at the margin, “reactionaries” (who tend to be more politically and socially “conservative”) and “technocrats” (who tend to identify as politically “progressive”) are united by their desire for greater control over the pace and shape of technological innovation. They both hope that sagacious, noble-minded public officials can set us on a “better path,” or return us to an old path from which we have drifted.

Similarly, Atkinson’s “preservationists versus modernizers” dichotomy identified the “small-c” conservatism that animates the preservationist mindset, regardless of which party or political movement they belong to. Graboyes and I identify this same tendency of those with a precautionary, Fortress mindset to be deeply suspicious of change, and sometimes even being quite openly hostile to it–regardless of their political affiliation. Moreover, all four authors note that, at a minimum, Stasis/Preservationist/Fortress/Precautionary vision is unified by a general gloominess about the prospect for technological change to really better our economy or culture.

From a policy perspective, the competing visions outlined in each of these four paradigms are unified by their preferred policy default for new innovation. Generally speaking, those subscribing to the Dynamist/Modernizer/Frontier/Permissionless Innovation vision believe that innovators should have a clear green light to experiment without fear of prior restraint. By contrast, those adhering to the Stasis/Preservationist/Fortress/Precautionary vision are more risk-adverse and tend to opt for “better to be safe than sorry” policy defaults.

Here’s a little table I put together to highlight the “conflict of visions” over innovation policy identified in these works.

A Problem with These Paradigms

An astute reader will notice a potential problem with these four paradigms: They were crafted by people (including myself) who were much more favorably disposed to one vision than the other. In fact, each of the authors listed here (including me) firmly embraced a common “positive” or “optimistic” vision about the potential for innovation and technological change to generally boost human welfare. We were all writing defenses of visions that, generally speaking, encourage the adoption of attitudes and public policies that are generally welcoming toward new innovations. Postrel, for example, was seeking to articulate and defend the superiority of the dynamist vision over the stasis mentality. Atkinson defended modernizers and bashed preservationists. Graboyes embraced the Frontier mentality and warned of the dangers of the Fortress mentality. Finally, in my own work, I have vociferously defended the notion of permissionless innovation while repeatedly criticizing precautionary principle-based thinking.

I will proudly defend my own work as well as the visions sketched out by Postrel, Atkinson, and Graboyes, which are all very much in league with my own. Nonetheless, some readers or critics might claim that we have stacked the deck in our favor by framing innovation policy debates in the ways we have. We each had a polemical purpose in mind when writing these books; we were hoping to convince others to embrace our way of thinking about technological progress and the future. As a result, that influenced our choice of language and labels. Some critics might even claim that the words we chose to describe the alternative vision are too simplistic or unfairly derogatory. After all, who wants to be labeled a “stasis”-minded “preservationist” who is trapped in a “fortress” mentality advocating hopelessly “precautionary” policies?! By contrast, it is relatively easy for many of us to say we are “modernizers” who embrace “dynamism” and the “frontier” spirit in defense of “permissionless innovation.”

Technological critics have penned a wide variety of polemics making their views on these matters clear, but what is interesting is how few of them attempt to describe the opposing positions in clear detail, or even bother trying to label them. Nor do they usually bother labeling their own positions or perspectives. I suspect that many of them would claim their visions or critiques cannot be succinctly summarized in a mere word or phrase, and that trying to craft conflicting “visions” about innovation policy over-simplifies very complex matters. I actually appreciate that point more than you think. When I am writing about these matters, I try not to over-generalize the very nuanced, sensitive issues in play in here, such as the privacy, safety, and security implications associated with various new innovations. These are profound matters and they deserve to be analyzed carefully and respectfully.

That being said, I still believe that there is a role for visions when thinking about the past, the present, and the future of technological change. Labels and classifications can help us unpack the philosophical differences between different people and organizations and then also evaluate their preferred policy solutions. This allows us to better understand what animates the opposing forces that are pushing for specific policy changes.

Nonetheless, I welcome alternative framings of these proposals and the personalities behind them. Moreover, I would very much like to see others — either those who take opposing views, or analysts with no stake in the fight — suggest other ways of looking at the conflict of visions that animates debates over technological innovation and the future of progress.

A Note on Joel Garreau’s Framing

I want to close with a quick postscript related to my point about over-simplifying “visions” about technological change.  In 2010, I penned an essay that got a fair amount of attention entitled, “Are You An Internet Optimist or Pessimist? The Great Debate over Technology’s Impact on Society.” As the title implied, it was an attempt to divide the history of thinking about technological innovation into two camps: “pessimists” and “optimists.” It was a crude and overly-simplistic dichotomy, but it was an attempt to begin sketching out a rough taxonomy of the personalities and perspectives that we often seen pitted against each other in debates about the impact of technology on culture and humanity.

I was never really satisfied with the “optimist vs. pessimist” breakdown, and I got an earful from some people about it. I always thought there must be somebody who had figured out a better way of reviewing the long arc of history and human thinking about technological change and coming up with better labels or “visions.” And there was!

When I wrote that earlier piece, I was unfortunately not aware of a similar (and much better) framing of this divide that was developed by science and technology writer Joel Garreau in his outstanding 2005 book, Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies — and What It Means to Be Human. In that book, Garreau is thinking in much grander terms about technology and the future than I was in my earlier essay. He was focused on how various emerging technologies might be changing our very humanity and he notes that narratives about these issues are typically framed in “Heaven” versus “Hell” scenarios.

Under the “Heaven” scenario, technology drives history relentlessly, and in almost every way for the better. As Garreau describes the beliefs of the Heaven crowd, they believe that going forward, “almost unimaginably good things are happening, including the conquering of disease and poverty, but also an increase in beauty, wisdom, love, truth, and peace.” (p. 130) By contrast, under the “Hell” scenario, “technology is used for extreme evil, threatening humanity with extinction.” (p. 95) Garreau notes that what unifies the Hell scenario theorists is the sense that in “wresting power from the gods and seeking to transcend the human condition,” we end up instead creating a monster — or maybe many different monsters — that threatens our very existence. Garreau says this “Frankenstein Principle” can be seen in countless works of literature and technological criticism throughout history, and it is still very much with us today. (p. 108)

After discussing the “Heaven” and “Hell” scenarios cast about by countless tech writers throughout history, Garreau outlined a third, and more pragmatic “Prevail” option, which views history “as a remarkably effective paean to the power of humans to muddle through extraordinary circumstances.” As Garreau explains it, under the “Prevail” scenario, “humans shape and adapt [technology] in entirely new directions.” (p. 95) “Just because the problems are increasing doesn’t mean solutions might not also be increasing to match them,” he rightly notes. (p. 154)

That pretty much sums up my own perspective on things, as I noted in this essay earlier this year, “Muddling Through: How We Learn to Cope with Technological Change.”  I think the “prevail” or “muddling through” notion offers the best explanation for how we learn to cope with technological disruption and prosper in the process. (I also wrote a lengthy law review article on this and discussed this issue more in my recent book.) In any event, I chose not to include Garreau’s framework in the above discussion because Garreau — a former reporter and editor at The Washington Post — tries to be somewhat more objective in discussing the various “Heaven” vs. “Hell” scenarios and the personalities behind them (even though in the concluding chapter he seems to be aligning himself with the “Prevail” crowd.) So, it doesn’t quite align perfectly with the more polemical visions I described above. But I continue to think it is the single best thing penned in recent years on the nature of these debates. I cannot recommend it strongly enough.

In closing, I want to reiterate that I would very much welcome suggestions from others about alternative framings and paradigms for thinking about the future of technological change and progress. I imagine I will spend the rest of my life researching and writing about these issues, so I’d love to get more input.  As you can tell, I find these debates terrifically interesting!

I am pleased to announce the release of my latest book, “Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom.” It’s a short manifesto (just under 100 pages) that condenses — and attempts to make more accessible — arguments that I have developed in various law review articles, working papers, and blog posts over the past few years. I have two goals with this book.

First, I attempt to show how the central fault line in almost all modern technology policy debates revolves around “the permission question,” which asks: Must the creators of new technologies seek the blessing of public officials before they develop and deploy their innovations? How that question is answered depends on the disposition one adopts toward new inventions. Two conflicting attitudes are evident.

One disposition is known as the “precautionary principle.” Generally speaking, it refers to the belief that new innovations should be curtailed or disallowed until their developers can prove that they will not cause any harms to individuals, groups, specific entities, cultural norms, or various existing laws, norms, or traditions.

The other vision can be labeled “permissionless innovation.” It refers to the notion that experimentation with new technologies and business models should generally be permitted by default. Unless a compelling case can be made that a new invention will bring serious harm to society, innovation should be allowed to continue unabated and problems, if they develop at all, can be addressed later.

I argue that we are witnessing a grand clash of visions between these two mindsets today in almost all major technology policy discussions today.

The second major objective of the book, as is made clear by the title, is to make a forceful case in favor of the latter disposition of “permissionless innovation.” I argue that policymakers should unapologetically embrace and defend the permissionless innovation ethos — not just for the Internet but also for all new classes of networked technologies and platforms. Some of the specific case studies discussed in the book include: the “Internet of Things” and wearable technologies, smart cars and autonomous vehicles, commercial drones, 3D printing, and various other new technologies that are just now emerging.

I explain how precautionary principle thinking is increasingly creeping into policy discussions about these technologies. The urge to regulate preemptively in these sectors is driven by a variety of safety, security, and privacy concerns, which are discussed throughout the book. Many of these concerns are valid and deserve serious consideration. However, I argue that if precautionary-minded regulatory solutions are adopted in a preemptive attempt to head-off these concerns, the consequences will be profoundly deleterious.

The central lesson of the booklet is this: Living in constant fear of hypothetical worst-case scenarios — and premising public policy upon them — means that best-case scenarios will never come about. When public policy is shaped by precautionary principle reasoning, it poses a serious threat to technological progress, economic entrepreneurialism, social adaptation, and long-run prosperity.

Again, that doesn’t mean we should ignore the various problems created by these highly disruptive technologies. But how we address these concerns matters greatly. If and when problems develop, there are many less burdensome ways to address them than through preemptive technological controls. The best solutions to complex social problems are almost always organic and “bottom-up” in nature. Luckily, there exists a wide variety of constructive approaches that can be tapped to address or alleviate concerns associated with new innovations. These include:

• education and empowerment efforts (including media literacy, digital citizenship efforts);
• social pressure from activists, academics, and the press and the public more generally.
• voluntary self-regulation and adoption of best practices (including privacy and security “by design” efforts); and,
• increased transparency and awareness-building efforts to enhance consumer knowledge about how new technologies work.

Such solutions are almost always superior to top-down, command-and-control regulatory edits and bureaucratic schemes of a “Mother, May I?” (i.e., permissioned) nature. The problem with “top-down” traditional regulatory systems is that they often tend to be overly-rigid, bureaucratic, inflexible, and slow to adapt to new realities. They focus on preemptive remedies that aim to predict the future, and future hypothetical problems that may not ever come about. Worse yet, administrative regulation generally preempts or prohibits the beneficial experiments that yield new and better ways of doing things. It raises the cost of starting or running a business or non-business venture, and generally discourages activities that benefit society.

To the extent that other public policies are needed to guide technological developments, simple legal principles are greatly preferable to technology-specific, micro-managed regulatory regimes. Again, ex ante (preemptive and precautionary) regulation is often highly inefficient, even dangerous. To the extent that any corrective legal action is needed to address harms, ex post measures, especially via the common law (torts, class actions, etc.), are typically superior. And the Federal Trade Commission will, of course, continue to play a backstop here by utilizing the broad consumer protection powers it possesses under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, which prohibits “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.” In recent years, the FTC has already brought and settled many cases involving its Section 5 authority to address identity theft and data security matters. If still more is needed, enhanced disclosure and transparency requirements would certainly be superior to outright bans on new forms of experimentation or other forms of heavy-handed technological controls.

In the end, however, I argue that, to the maximum extent possible, our default position toward new forms of technological innovation must remain: “innovation allowed.” That is especially the case because, more often than not, citizens find ways to adapt to technological change by employing a variety of coping mechanisms, new norms, or other creative fixes. We should have a little more faith in the ability of humanity to adapt to the challenges new innovations create for our culture and economy. We have done it countless times before. We are creative, resilient creatures. That’s why I remain so optimistic about our collective ability to confront the challenges posed by these new technologies and prosper in the process.

If you’re interested in taking a look, you can find a free PDF of the book at the Mercatus Center website or you can find out how to order it from there as an eBook. Hardcopies are also available. I’ll be doing more blogging about the book in coming weeks and months. The debate between the “permissionless innovation” and “precautionary principle” worldviews is just getting started and it promises to touch every tech policy debate going forward.

Related Essays :

• “The Growing Conflict of Visions over the Internet of Things & Privacy,” Technology Liberation Front, January 14, 2014.
• “CES 2014 Report: The Internet of Things Arrives, but Will Washington Welcome It?” Technology Liberation Front, January 8, 2014.
• “Who Really Believes in ‘Permissionless Innovation’?” Technology Liberation Front, March 4, 2013.
• “What Does It Mean to ‘Have a Conversation’ about a New Technology?” Technology Liberation Front, May 23, 2013.
• “On the Line between Technology Ethics vs. Technology Policy,” Technology Liberation Front, August 1, 2013.
• “Planning for Hypothetical Horribles in Tech Policy Debates,” Technology Liberation Front, August 6, 2013.
• “Edith Ramirez’s ‘Big Data’ Speech: Privacy Concerns Prompt Precautionary Principle Thinking,” Technology Liberation Front, August 29, 2013.
• “When It Comes to Information Control, Everybody Has a Pet Issue & Everyone Will Be Disappointed,” Technology Liberation Front, April 29, 2011.
• “Copyright, Privacy, Property Rights & Information Control: Common Themes, Common Challenges,” Technology Liberation Front, April 10, 2012.
• “Can We Adapt to the Internet of Things?” IAPP Privacy Perspectives, June 19, 2013.
• “Why Do We Always Sell the Next Generation Short?” Forbes, January 8, 2012.
• “The Six Things That Drive ‘Technopanics,’” Forbes, March 4, 2012.

My colleague Eli Dourado brought to my attention this XKCD comic and when tweeting it out yesterday he made the comment that “Half of tech policy is dealing with these people”:

The comic and Eli’s comment may be a bit snarky, but something about it rang true to me because while conducting research on the impact of new information technologies on society I often come across books, columns, blog posts, editorials, and tweets that can basically be summed up with the line from that comic: “we should stop to consider the consequences of [this new technology] before we …”  Or, equally common is the line: “we need to have a conversation about [this new technology] before we…”

But what does that really mean? Certainly “having a conversation” about the impact of a new technology on society is important. But what is the nature of that “conversation”? How is it conducted? How do we know when it is going on or when it is over?

Generally speaking, it is best to avoid guessing as to motive when addressing public policy arguments. It is better to just address the assertions or proposals set forth in someone’s work and not try to determine what motivates it or what other ulterior motives may be driving their reasoning.

Nonetheless, I can’t help but think that sometimes what the “we-need-to-have-a-conversation” crowd is really suggesting is that we need to have a conversation about how to slow or stop the technology in question, not merely talk about its ramifications.

I see this at work all the time in the field of privacy policy. Many policy wonks craft gloom-and-doom scenarios that suggest our privacy is all but dead. I’ve notice a lot more of this lately in essays about the “Internet of Things” and Google Glass in particular. (See these recent essays by Paul Bernal and Bruce Schneier for good examples). Dystopian dread drips from almost every line of these essays.

But, after conjuring up a long parade of horribles and suggesting “we need to have a conversation” about new technologies, authors of such essays almost never finish their thought. There’s no conclusion or clear alternative offered. I suppose that in some cases it is because there aren’t any easy answers. Other times, however, I get the feeling that they have an answer in mind — comprehensive regulation of new technologies in question — but that they don’t want to come out and say it because they think they’ll sound like Luddites. Hell, I don’t know and, again, I don’t want to guess as to motive. I just find it interesting that so much of the writing being done in this arena these days follows that exact model.

But here’s the other point I want to make: I don’t think we’ll ever be able to “have a conversation” about a new technology that yields satisfactory answers because real wisdom is born of experience. This is one of the many important lessons I learned from my intellectual hero Aaron Wildavsky and his pioneering work on risk and safety. In his seminal 1988 book Searching for Safety, Wildavsky warned of the dangers of the “trial without error” mentality — otherwise known as the precautionary principle approach — and he contrasted it with the trial-and-error method of evaluating risk and seeking wise solutions to it. Wildavsky argued that:

The direct implication of trial without error is obvious: If you can do nothing without knowing first how it will turn out, you cannot do anything at all. An indirect implication of trial without error is that if trying new things is made more costly, there will be fewer departures from past practice; this very lack of change may itself be dangerous in forgoing chances to reduce existing hazards … Existing hazards will continue to cause harm if we fail to reduce them by taking advantage of the opportunity to benefit from repeated trials.

This is a lesson too often overlooked not just in the field of health and safety regulation, but also in the world of information policy and this insight is the foundation of a filing I will be submitting to the FTC next week in its new proceeding on the “Privacy and Security Implications of the Internet of Things.” In that filing, I will note that, as was the case with many other new information and communications technologies, the initial impulse may be to curb or control the development of certain Internet of Things technologies to guard against theoretical future misuses or harms that might develop.

Again, when such fears take the form of public policy prescriptions, it is referred to as a “precautionary principle” and it generally holds that, because a given new technology could pose some theoretical danger or risk in the future, public policies should control or limit the development of such innovations until their creators can prove that they won’t cause any harms.

The problem with letting such precautionary thinking guide policy is that it poses a serious threat to technological progress, economic entrepreneurialism, and human prosperity. Under an information policy regime guided at every turn by a precautionary principle, technological innovation would be impossible because of fear of the unknown; hypothetical worst-case scenarios would trump all other considerations. Social learning and economic opportunities become far less likely, perhaps even impossible, under such a regime. In practical terms, it means fewer services, lower quality goods, higher prices, diminished economic growth, and a decline in the overall standard of living.

For these reasons, to the maximum extent possible, the default position toward new forms of technological innovation should be innovation allowed. This policy norm is better captured in the well-known Internet ideal of “permissionless innovation,” or the general freedom to experiment and learn through trial-and-error experimentation.

Stated differently, when it comes to new information technologies such as the Internet of Things, the default policy position should be an “ anti-Precautionary Principle.” Paul Ohm, who recently joined the FTC as a Senior Policy Advisor, outlined the concept in his 2008 article, “The Myth of the Superuser: Fear, Risk, and Harm Online.” “Fear of the powerful computer user, the ‘Superuser,’ dominates debates about online conflict,” Ohm argued, but this superuser is generally “a mythical figure” concocted by those who are typically quick to set forth worst-case scenarios about the impact of digital technology on society. Fear of such superusers and the hypothetical worst-case dystopian scenarios they might bring about prompts policy action, since “Policymakers, fearful of his power, too often overreact by passing overbroad, ambiguous laws intended to ensnare the Superuser but which are instead used against inculpable, ordinary users.” “This response is unwarranted,” Ohm says “because the Superuser is often a marginal figure whose power has been greatly exaggerated.”

Ohm gets it exactly right and he could have cited Wildavsky on the matter, who noted that, “’Worst case’ assumptions can convert otherwise quite ordinary conditions… into disasters, provided only that the right juxtaposition of unlikely factors occur.” In other words, creative minds can string together some random anecdotes or stories and concoct horrific-sounding scenarios for the future that leave us searching for preemptive to solutions to problems that haven’t even developed yet.

Unfortunately, fear of “superusers” and worst-case boogeyman scenarios are already driving much of the debate over the Internet of Things. Most of the fear and loathing involves privacy-related dystopian scenarios that envision a miserable panoptic future from which there is no escape. And that’s about the time the authors suggest “we need to have a conversation” about these new technologies — by which they really mean to suggest we need to find ways to put the genie back in the bottle or smash the bottle before the genie even gets out.

But how are we to know what the future holds? And even to the extent some critics believe they possess a techno-crystal ball that can forecast the future, why is it seemingly always the case that none of those possible futures involves humans gradually adapting and assimilating these new technologies into their lives the way they have countless times before? In my FTC filing next week, I will document examples of that process of initial resistance, gradual adaptation, and then eventual assimilation of various new information technologies into society. But I have already developed a model explaining this process and offering plenty of examples in my recent law review article, “Technopanics, Threat Inflation, and the Danger of an Information Technology Precautionary Principle,” as well as in this lengthy blog post, “Who Really Believes in ‘Permissionless Innovation’?”

In sum, the most important “conversations” we have about new technologies are the ones we have every day as we interact with those new technologies and with each other. Wisdom is born of experience, including experiences involving risk and the possibility of mistakes and accidents. Patience and an openness to permissionless innovation represent the wise disposition toward new technologies not only because it provides breathing space for future entrepreneurialism, but also because it provides an opportunity to observe both the evolution of societal attitudes toward new technologies and how citizens adapt to them.

We spend a lot of time here defending the simple proposition that flexible free-market pricing is a good thing. You would think that in 2012 we wouldn’t need to do so, but there’s a growing movement afoot today by some academics, regulatory activists, and public policymakers to have government start asserting more authority over broadband pricing. In particular, they want Congress, the FCC, or state officials to investigate and possibly even regulate efforts by wireline and wireless broadband carriers to use usage-based pricing and data caps as a method of calibrating supply and demand. This was the focus of my last weekly Forbes column, “The Specter Of Broadband Price Controls.” In the piece I note that:

Data caps and usage-based pricing are forms of what economists refer to as price discrimination. Although viewed with suspicion by some policymakers and regulatory-minded academics and activists, price discrimination is widely recognized to improve consumer welfare. Price-differentiated and prioritized services are part of almost every industrial sector in our capitalist economy. Notable examples include airline and hotel reservations, prioritized shipping services, amusement park passes, and fuel and energy pricing. Economists agree that price discrimination represents a sensible way to calibrate supply and demand while ensuring the fixed costs of doing business get covered. Consumers benefit from such pricing experimentation by gaining more options while firms gain more certainty about investment and service decisions.

This is confirmed by an excellent new Mercatus Center working paper on “The Impact of Data Caps and Other Forms of Usage-Based Pricing for Broadband Access,” by Daniel A. Lyons, an assistant professor of law at Boston College Law School. Lyons explains why a return to price controls for communications would be monumentally misguided. Lyons notes that “data caps and other forms of metered consumption are not inherently anti-consumer or anticompetitive. Rather, they reflect different pricing strategies through which a broadband company may recover its costs from its customer base and fund future infrastructure investment.” He notes that “by aligning costs more closely with use, usage-based pricing may effectively shift more network costs onto those consumers who use the network the most.”

What I find most interesting about the debate over broadband pricing flexibility is the way some so-called “consumer advocates” cannot seemingly wrap their heads around the fact that price discrimination can actually benefit most consumers by creating more and better pricing options and service alternatives. As I noted in my Forbes essay, “if policymakers lock-in flat rate pricing or regulate pricing such that it is not allowed to fluctuate with demand or investment needs, then it is likely that light users (including many lower income users) will end up paying more than they need to for their overall share of network costs. If that is also disallowed through rate regulation, then network investment will suffer and further innovation will be discouraged. Something has to give because, again, there really is no free lunch.”

It remains to be seen whether true free market pricing will be allowed to continue in this context, but make no doubt about it, this is the most important aspect of the ongoing debate about modern information economics. If America returns to price and rate controls for communications, innovation and investment will suffer greatly.

Oh, and here’s a video featuring Eli Dourado, who can explain this much more eloquently than me! …

Additional Reading

• More on Net Neutrality, the Importance of Business Model Experimentation & Pricing Flexibility (May 9, 2012)
• Real Talk on Net Neutrality (May 9, 2012)
• Netflix Falls Prey to Marginal Cost Fallacy & Pleads for a Broadband Free Ride (July 8, 2011)
• Smartphones & Usage-Based Pricing: Are Price Controls Coming? (July 12, 2011)
• Why Congestion Pricing for the iPhone & Broadband Makes Sense (October 7, 2009)
• The (Un)Free Press Calls for Internet Price Controls: “The Broadband Internet Fairness Act” (June 17, 2009)
• Free Press Hypocrisy over Metering & Internet Price Controls (June 18, 2009)
• Bandwidth Cap Hysteria & the Alternative (October 4, 2008)
• Once Again, Why Not Meter Broadband Pipes?  (September 7, 2007)
• Why Not Meter? (March 12, 2007)
• The Real Net Neutrality Debate: Pricing Flexibility Versus Pricing Regulation (October 27, 2005)

Looking for a concise overview of how Internet architecture has evolved and a principled discussion of the public policies that should govern the Net going forward? Then look no further than Christopher Yoo‘s new book, The Dynamic Internet: How Technology, Users, and Businesses are Transforming the Network. It’s a quick read (just 140 pages) and is worth picking up.  Yoo is a Professor of Law, Communication, and Computer & Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania and also serves as the Director of the Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition there. For those who monitor ongoing developments in cyberlaw and digital economics, Yoo is a well-known and prolific intellectual who has established himself as one of the giants of this rapidly growing policy arena.

Yoo makes two straight-forward arguments in his new book. First, the Internet is changing. In Part 1 of the book, Yoo offers a layman-friendly overview of the changing dynamics of Internet architecture and engineering. He documents the evolving nature of Internet standards, traffic management and congestion policies, spam and security control efforts, and peering and pricing policies. He also discusses the rise of peer-to-peer applications, the growth of mobile broadband, the emergence of the app store economy, and what the explosion of online video consumption means for ongoing bandwidth management efforts. Those are the supply-side issues. Yoo also outlines the implications of changes in the demand-side of the equation, such as changing user demographics and rapidly evolving demands from consumers. He notes that these new demand-side realities of Internet usage are resulting in changes to network management and engineering, further reinforcing changes already underway on the supply-side.

Yoo’s second point in the book flows logically from the first: as the Internet continues to evolve in such a highly dynamic fashion, public policy must as well. Yoo is particularly worried about calls to lock in standards, protocols, and policies from what he regards as a bygone era of Internet engineering, architecture, and policy. “The dramatic shift in Internet usage suggests that its founding architectural principles form the mid-1990s may no longer be appropriate today,” he argues. (p. 4) “[T]he optimal network architecture is unlikely to be static. Instead, it is likely to be dynamic over time, changing with the shifts in end-user demands,” he says. (p. 7) Thus, “the static, one-size-fits-all approach that dominates the current debate misses the mark.” (p. 7)

Yoo makes a particular powerful case for flexible network pricing policies. His outstanding chapter on “The Growing Complexity of Internet Pricing” offers an excellent overview of the changing dynamics of pricing in this arena and explains why experimentation with different pricing methods and business models must be allowed to continue. Getting pricing right is essential, Yoo notes, if we hope to ensure ongoing investment in new networks and services. He also notes how foolish it is to expect the government to come in and save the day thought massive infrastructure investment to cover the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to continue to build-out high-speed services:

Most industry and political observers believe that the federal government will not be in a position to allocate that amount of money to upgrade our nation’s broadband infrastructure for the foreseeable future. The next-generation network will thus be built by private enterprise. But private corporations cannot be expected to undertake such investments unless they have a reasonable prospect of recovering their upfront costs from consumers who are using the increased bandwidth and other enhancements to the existing network. (p. 102)

Again, that’s why flexible pricing policies and ongoing experimentation with various business models is vital. This insight is particularly timely in light of the recent renewed interest in data caps. A lot of people who don’t know a lick about economics and have never run a real business in their lives are seemingly obsessed with telling private operators how to run theirs. If the Net neutrality wars devolve into a battle over price controls — exactly as I predicted they would 7 years ago this month — then we could be headed for a day when federal policymakers derail the advances in broadband we’ve seen in recent years by substituting mandates for markets.

Throughout the second half of his book, Yoo explains why that would be a disaster for consumers and high-tech innovation. To most of us, the arguments Yoo advances here are perfectly logical, but to many Ivory Tower intellectuals who dominate Net policy debates today, it will all be considered apostasy of the very highest order. Those that elevate Net neutrality and so-called “public interest” regulation to quasi-religious concepts will likely be constructing Christopher Yoo voodoo dolls and attempting to sew his mouth shut. Yet, the policy standard Yoo is advancing here is perfectly logical. In essence, he’s trying to counter the gradual growth of a Precautionary Principle mindset for Internet policy. Here’s how he puts it:

Just as engineers must design structures that preserve room for experimentation, so must regulators. In particular, regulators should avoid promulgating policies that foreclose certain technical approaches or require industry actors to obtain advance approval before they can experiment with new technological solutions. The benefits of most practices will remain ambiguous before they are deployed, and placing the burden on industry actors to prove consumer benefit before implementation would chill experimentation and effectively prevent ambiguous practices from ever being deployed. This in turn would prevent engineers from obtaining the real-world experience they need to evaluate different technological solutions and eliminate the breathing room on which technological progress depends. In the face of uncertainty, policymakers should not attempt to predict which particular network solution will ultimately prevail; rather, they ought to focus on creating regulatory structures that give industry participants the freedom to pursue a wide range of business strategies and allow consumers to decide which one (or ones, if consumer demand is sufficiently diverse to support multiple business models targeted at different market niches) ultimately proves to be the best.” (p. 8)

In other words, public policy must not restrict experimentation based on conjectural fears and boogeyman scenarios. Public policy should generally seek to avoid ex ante forms of preemptive, prophylactic Internet regulation and instead rely on an ex post approach when and if things go wrong. As I have argued here many times before, as a general rule, our policymakers should embrace “techno-agnosticism” toward ongoing debates over standards, protocols, business models, pricing methods, and so on. Lawmakers should not be preemptively tilting the balance in one direction or the other or, worse yet, restricting experimentation that can help us find superior solutions. Here’s how Yoo articulates this same principle of techno-agnosticism:

network engineering is inherently an exercise in tradeoffs that does not lend itself to broad generalizations. There is no such thing as a perfect, inherently superior architecture. Instead, the optimal infrastructure for any particular network depends on the nature of the flows passing through the network as well as the costs of the technologies comprising the network. This perspective stands in stark contrast to the categorical tone that has dominated debates over Internet policy for the past five years. (p. 138)

Indeed it does. If you read through books by Zittrain, Lessig, Wu, van Schewick, Frischmann, and others, you will notice the consistent assertion that we already have the magic formula for the Internet and all networks, for that matter. It almost always comes down to what I have referred to as an ideology of “openness at any cost” or “neutrality uber alles.” In this religion, everything is subservient to openness and neutrality, no matter what the cost (and no matter how defined, even if that is much trickier than those academics let on). But for all the reasons Yoo lays out in his book, we should reject neutrality uber alles as the basis of public policy. “The shifts in the technological and economic environment surrounding the network should remind everyone involved in Internet policy of the importance of embracing change.” (p. 139).  Again, that counsels techno-agnosticism and light-touch, responsive regulation — not a preemptive Precautionary Principle for Internet decision-making. As Yoo states in his conclusion:

Perhaps the best means for creating such an environment is to create a regulatory-enforcement regime that evaluates any charges of improper behavior on a case-by-case basis after the fact… So long as the burden of proof is placed on the party challenging the practice, such a regime should provide sufficient breathing room for industry participants to experiment with new solutions for emerging problems while simultaneously safeguarding consumers against any anticompetitive practices. (p. 139).

And even under that regime, Yoo makes it clear throughout the book that there should be a very high bar established before regulation is pursued. This is particularly true because of the First Amendment values at stake when the government attempts to regulate speech platforms. In Chapter 9 of the book, Yoo walks the reader through all the relevant case law on this front and makes it clear how “the Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that the editorial discretion exercised by intermediaries serves important free speech values.” (p. 120). Yoo also makes the case that a certain degree of intermediation helps serve consumer needs by helping them more easily find the content and services they desire. Law should not seek to constrain that and, under current Supreme Court First Amendment jurisprudence, it probably cannot.

So, in conclusion, I strongly encourage everyone to pick up a copy of Christopher Yoo’s  Dynamic Internet. It strikes just the right balance for Net governance and public policy in the information age. It all comes down to flexibility and freedom.  If the Internet and all modern digital technologies are to thrive, we must reject the central planner’s mindset that dominated the analog era and forever bury all the static thinking it entailed.

Additional Reading:

• The Real Net Neutrality Debate: Pricing Flexibility Versus Pricing Regulation (Oct 2005)
• More on Net Neutrality, the Importance of Business Model Experimentation & Pricing Flexibility (May 2012)
• Smartphones & Usage-Based Pricing: Are Price Controls Coming? (July 2011)
• Netflix Falls Prey to Marginal Cost Fallacy & Pleads for a Broadband Free Ride (July 8, 2011)
• Why Congestion Pricing for the iPhone & Broadband Makes Sense (October 7, 2009)
• The (Un)Free Press Calls for Internet Price Controls: “The Broadband Internet Fairness Act” (June 17, 2009)
• Free Press Hypocrisy over Metering & Internet Price Controls (June 18, 2009)
• Mueller’s “Networks and States” = Classical Liberalism for the Information Age (Nov. 2010)
• Doctorow’s Definition of “Techno-Optimism” Is Full of Fear & False Choices (May 2011)
• review of Zittrain’s “Future of the Internet” (March 2008)
• Code, Pessimism, and the Illusion of “Perfect Control” [review of Lessig’s “Code” at 10th anniversary] (May 2009)

Over at his blog, our old TLF colleague Tim Lee has been discussing the AT&T – T-Mobile merger and the ways libertarians should think about antitrust more generally.  In his latest post, he pushes back against a brief comment I posted on a previous essay. You can head over to his site and read that exchange and then see my latest comment. But I thought I would also post it here for those interested.

____________

Tim… My thinking on antitrust is very much shaped by the choice between ex ante vs. ex post regulation. How much faith should we place in sector-specific regulators to get things right through preemptive, prophylactic regulation versus allowing things to play out and then — on the rare occasions when intolerable monopolies over essential goods develop — letting antitrust regulators devise a remedy?

More than any other economic value, I care about experimentation. I am completely under the sway of the Austrian School of thinking about markets and competition as an ongoing experiment, an evolutionary journey, a discovery process.  How are we to know if intolerable monopolies over essential goods will actually develop unless we let things play out?

As I argued in my critiques of the Lessig/Zittrain/Wu school of thinking, we need to be a bit more humble and have a little faith that ongoing experimentation and discovery will help us evolve into a better equilibrium. It’s during what some regard as a market’s darkest hour when some of the most exciting forms of disruptive technologies and innovation are developing. [I’ve elaborated more on this point in this lengthy discussion about Gary Reback’s recent book on antitrust.]

Viewed in that light, opting for ex post antitrust regulation, therefore, is an easy choice compared to the misguided micro-management associated with preemptive regulatory strikes.  The entire history of FCC common carriage regulation and “public interest” mandates teach us that. It also teaches how bureaucracies become hopeless entrenched, inefficient, and prone to capture.

Now, having said all that, it must be noted that antitrust law itself is a form of economic regulation and has its own set of problems. And you’re correct to note that there “has long been a tension in the libertarian approach to antitrust law.” I can appreciate many of the arguments made by antitrust abolitionists. (There’s a certain madness to antitrust law best captured by R.W. Grant’s classic story, “Tom Smith and His Incredible Bread Machine.”) Nonetheless, it’s important to be realistic and acknowledge that antitrust likely isn’t going away and that perhaps it shouldn’t if it’s existence can help us avoid what I regard as the nightmare scenario I described above: preemptive, sectoral, technology-specific, command-and-control oriented regulation.

Of course, some antitrust law can be preemptive without having all that baggage.  And that’s essentially what I think you are endorsing here for AT&T – T-Mobile.  You want the feds to “just say No” and be done with it. You’re assuming that’s sensible and efficient solution when I wouldn’t regard either of those things as a given.  Again, I’d like to let experimentation continue and see how things turn out.

I also do not understand your conclusion that “The federal government has a responsibility to clean up its own messes, as it did with the Ma Bell breakup in 1984, and it will hopefully do by blocking the AT&T/T-Mobile merger.”  These two situations are completely unique. As I noted in that old history of how the original AT&T monopoly came about, there was nothing “natural” about it. It was government guided at almost every junction. Not so for the new AT&T. While we don’t have a perfectly free market in communications services today, AT&T competes more aggressively — and is generally more antagonistic toward government intervention — than it ever has been before.  Moreover, having lived through the tail end of the old Bell System, I can remember the days of having to use a crappy rotary dial phone in just one color and being told to be happy about it.  Today, by contrast, competition is robust and innovation is thriving. I’ve never used an AT&T phone and I don’t plan to because of the many excellent smartphone alternatives at my disposal.

It’s a new world and one that keeps getting better regardless of who owns what.  Have a little faith, my friend.

But give me a call if things get bad. You have my Skype number after all!

Cyberbullying constitutes one of the largest growth categories of recent cyberlaw legislative proposals, and many state legislatures have already enacted measures aimed at combating this problem using a variety of approaches.  Those attempting to monitor ongoing developments in this field might find it useful to examine this National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) compendium of recent state cyberbullying bills.

In June, Berin Szoka and I published a PFF white paper, “Cyberbullying Legislation: Why Education is Preferable to Regulation.”  That paper mostly address federal legislation and, in particular, we contrasted the approaches set forth in Rep. Linda Sánchez’s (D-CA) “Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act,” versus the “School and Family Education about the Internet (SAFE Internet) Act,” which was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and in the House by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL).  Whereas the Sánchez bill would create a new federal felony to address these problems, the SAFE Internet Act proposes an education-based approach to the issue.

Generally speaking, Berin and I favor the latter approach, to the extent federal legislators feel the need to act. But we argued that state experimentation on this front may be the better way to go at this time.  As the NCSL survey suggests, states are pursing a variety of strategies and will continue to do so.  In light of that, I’m not sure why any federal legislation is needed at this time.  If the feds are really eager to push something at the national level, perhaps a generic public awareness / PSA campaign would make the most sense while more tailored state-based experimentation continues.  This is rare example of where state-based experimentation with a cyberlaw issue actually makes a lot of sense.