Many are understandably pessimistic about platforms and technology. This year has been a tough one, from Cambridge Analytica and Russian trolls to the implementation of GDPR and data breaches galore.
Those who think about the world, about the problems that we see every day, and about their own place in it, will quickly realize the immense frailty of humankind. Fear and worry makes sense. We are flawed, each one of us. And technology only seems to exacerbate those problems.
But life is getting better.
Poverty
continues nose-diving; adult literacy is at an all-time high; people around the world are living longer, living in democracies, and are better educated than at any other time in history. Meanwhile, the digital revolution has resulted in a glut of informational abundance, helping to correct the informational asymmetries that have long plagued humankind. The problem we now face is not how to address informational constraints, but how to provide the means for people to sort through and make sense of this abundant trove of data. These macro trends don’t make headlines.
Psychologists
know that people love to read negative articles. Our brains are wired for
pessimism
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A few months ago, I penned a mega book review about the growing divide between “Internet optimists and pessimists.” I noted that the Internet optimists — people like Chris Anderson, Clay Shirky, Yochai Benkler, Kevin Kelly, and others — believe that the Internet is generally improving our culture, economy, and society for the better. They believe the Net has empowered and liberated the masses, sparked unparalleled human creativity and communication, provided greater personalization and customization of media content, and created greater diversity of thought and a more deliberative democracy. By contrast, the Internet pessimists — including Nick Carr, Andrew Keen, Lee Siegel, and others — argue that the Internet is destroying popular culture and professional media, calling “truth” and “authority” into question by over-glamorizing amateurism and user-generated content, and that increased personalization is damaging deliberative democracy by leading to homogenization, close-mindedness, and an online echo-chamber. Needless to say, it’s a very heated debate!
I am currently working on a greatly expanded version of my “Net optimists vs. pessimists” essay for a magazine in which I will draw out more of these distinctions and weigh the arguments made by those in both camps. I plan on concluding that article by arguing that the optimists generally have the better of the argument, but that the pessimists make some fair points about the downsides of the Net’s radically disintermediating role on culture and economy.
So, this got me thinking that I needed to come up with some sort of a label for my middle-of-the-road position as well as a statement of my personal beliefs. As far as labels go, I guess I would call myself a “pragmatic optimist” since I generally side with the optimists in most of these debates, but not without some occasional reservations. Specifically, I don’t always subscribe to the Pollyanna-ish, rose-colored view of the world that some optimists seem to adopt. But the outright Chicken Little-like Ludditism of some Internet pessimists is even more over-the-top at times. Anyway, what follows is my “Pragmatic (Internet) Optimist’s Creed” which better explains my views. (Again, read my old essay first for some context about the relevant battle lines in this intellectual war).
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.