Here’s the first of two essays I’ve recently penned making “The Case for Internet Optimism.” This essay was included in the book, The Next Digital Decade: Essays on the Future of the Internet (2011), which was edited by Berin Szoka and Adam Marcus of TechFreedom.  In these essays, I identify two schools of Internet pessimism: (1) “Net Skeptics,” who are pessimistic about the Internet improving the lot of mankind; and (2) “Net Lovers,” who appreciate the benefits the Net brings society but who fear those benefits are disappearing, or that the Net or openness are dying.  (Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with these themes since I sketched them out in previous essays here such as, “Are You an Internet Optimist or Pessimist?” and “Two Schools of Internet Pessimism.”) The second essay is here.

This essay focuses on the first variant of Internet pessimism, which is rooted in general skepticism about the supposed benefits of cyberspace, digital technologies, and information abundance. The proponents of this pessimistic view often wax nostalgic about some supposed “good ‘ol days” when life was much better (although they can’t seem to agree when those were). At a minimum, they want us to slow down and think twice about life in the Information Age and how it’s personally affecting each of us.  Occasionally, however, this pessimism borders on neo-Ludditism, with some proponents recommending steps to curtail what they feel is the destructive impact of the Net or digital technologies on culture or the economy.  I identify the leading exponents of this view of Internet pessimism and their major works. I trace their technological pessimism back to Plato but argue that their pessimism is largely unwarranted. Humans are more resilient than pessimists care to admit and we learn how to adapt to technological change and assimilate new tools into our lives over time. Moreover, were we really better off in the scarcity era when we were collectively suffering from information poverty?  Generally speaking, despite the challenges it presents society, information abundance is a better dilemma to be facing than information poverty.  Nonetheless, I argue, we should not underestimate or belittle the disruptive impacts associated with the Information Revolution.  But we need to find ways to better cope with turbulent change in a dynamist fashion instead of attempting to roll back the clock on progress or recapture “the good ‘ol days,” which actually weren’t all that good.

Down below, I have embedded the entire chapter in a Scribd reader, but the essay can also be found on the TechFreedom website for the book as well as on SSRN.  I have also includes two updated tables that appeared in my old “optimists vs. pessimists” essay.  The first lists some of the leading Internet optimists and pessimists and their books. The second table outlines some of the major lines of disagreement between these two camps and I divided those disagreements into (1) Cultural / Social beliefs vs. (2) Economic / Business beliefs.

The Case for Internet Optimism Part 1 – Saving the Net From Its Detractors (Adam Thierer) http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf

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Well, even though I just recently put to bed my annual list of the “Most Important Info-Tech Policy Books of 2010,” I’ve already started investigating what new titles we’ll need to pay attention to in 2011.  Accordingly, I’ve started this list and hope that others can suggest other books I may have missed.  Here’s what I’ve got so far:

• Evgeny Morozov – The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (January)
• Sherry Turkle – Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (January)
• John Brockman (ed.) Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? The Net’s Impact on Our Minds and Future (January)
• Roy Rosenzweig – Clio Wired: The Future of the Past in the Digital Age (January)
• Berin Szoka (ed.) – The Next Digital Decade: Essays on the Future of the Internet (January)
• Susan Landau – Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies (February)
• Siva Vaidhyanathan – The Googlization of Everything, and Why We Should Worry (March)
• Cyrus Farivar – The Internet of Elsewhere: The Emergent Effects of a Wired World (May)
• Eddan Katz & Ramesh Subramanian (Eds.) –The Global Flow of Information: Legal, Social, and Cultural Perspectives (August)
• Daniel Solove – Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff between Privacy and Security
• Susan Crawford – The Big Squeeze
• Jeff Jarvis – Public Parts
• Rebecca MacKinnon – Consent of the Networked (late 2011 / early 2012)

As I’ve noted here before, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has an ongoing proceeding asking “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” The agency has hosted two workshops on the issue and a third is scheduled for June 15th at the National Press Club. Recently, the FTC released a 47-page staff discussion draft entitled “Potential Policy Recommendations to Support the Reinvention of Journalism,” which outlines dozens of proposals that have been set forth in recent years to “save journalism,” “reinvent media,” or support various forms of so-called “public interest programming.”  [I’ve embedded the document down below.] Although the FTC makes it very clear on the first page of the discussion draft that it “does not represent final conclusions or recommendations by the Commission or FTC staff [and] it is solely for purposes of discussion,” the document is drawing scrutiny and raising concern since it might foreshadow where the FTC (and Obama Administration) could be heading on this front.

Some of those raising a stink about the FTC draft include: Jeff Jarvis (“FTC Protects Journalism’s Past“); Rob Port (“Federal Government Considering “iPad Tax” To Subsidize Journalism“); Mark Tapscott: “(Will Journalists Wake up in Time to Save Journalism from Obama’s FTC?”); and Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times (“Obama’s FTC Plan to Reinvent America’s News Media“), who says, “this FTC study is rated R for anyone who thinks the federal government, the object of copious news coverage itself, has no business deciding which sectors of the private media business survive and thrive through its support, subsidies and encouragement with things like tax incentives. Yet that’s what this Obama administration paper is suggesting as another of the ex-community organizer’s galactic reform plans.”   Ouch!

I’ve spent a great deal of time considering many of the “reform” proposals that the FTC outlines in its discussion draft and, along with Berin Szoka, recently released a 5-part series of papers and filed 80 pages of comments with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in its “Future of Media” proceeding, which shares much in common with the FTC’s “Will Journalism Survive?” proceeding. Not all of the ideas floated in the FTC’s draft document are toxic, but some are very troubling and fit squarely in the red or yellow zone of that chart above, which plots a range of media policy options that the FTC or FCC might pursue.

As the FTC draft is structured currently, it appears to have been heavily influenced by the radical activist group Free Press and its founder Robert McChesney, the prolific neo-Marxist media scholar from the University of Illinois. I’ve explained in detail here before the dangerous ideas floated by McChesney and Free Press. For background, see:

• Free Press, Robert McChesney & the “Struggle” for Media, Aug. 2009
• A “Public Option” for Media? The Free Press Plan to Put Journalists on the Public Dole, Nov. 2009
• What the Media Reformistas Really Want, Aug. 2008
• Socializing Media in Order to Save It, March 2009

McChesney and his Free Press disciples have called for a “post-corporate” media world in which the state essentially serves as both a benefactor and partner of the press. Their “public option” for the press would essentially upend private media and toss the First Amendment into the dustbin of history. I encourage everyone who thinks I am exaggerating to read Chapter 4 (“Subsidizing Democracy”) of McChesney’s new book with John Nichols, The Death and Life of American Journalism as well as the “National Journalism Strategy” that Free Press released last year.

Those two works read like a Soviet-style 5-Year Plan for the Press. Massive subsidies. Massive taxes. Massive state meddling into virtually every aspect of the media marketplace and journalistic profession. And if, after reading those documents, you still don’t think they are out to destroy the private provision of media in America, you might want to check out this interview McChesney did with the Canadian-based “Socialist Project” in which he confessed that “the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists,” and noted that, “unless you make significant changes in the media, it will be vastly more difficult to have a revolution.” Similarly, in his book with Nichols, he concludes by noting that “We have responded in a time of crisis not with tinkering reforms but with revolution.”  They sure have!

For some reason, the FTC seems enamored with these dangerous ideas. McChesney and Free Press are cited over a dozen times and their proposals show up almost verbatim throughout the FTC’s discussion draft. Moreover, McChesney was recently invited to one of the FTC’s workshops to deliver a major address on these issues. Finally, what makes me particularly nervous is that Susan DeSanti, the person running the FTC’s effort, has praised McChesney and Nichols’ “excellent book” despite its call for radical steps that would essentially hobble private media and impose crushing taxes on just about everyone in sight to subsidize public, state-blessed media.

I sincerely hope that the FTC’s “discussion draft” is just that, and nothing more.  I’m fine with discussing kooky Marxist ideas all day long. I just hope our government isn’t getting ready to start imposing them upon us.

New FTC Staff Discussion

Can we steer people toward hard news — and get them to financially support it — through the use  of “news vouchers” or “public interest vouchers”? That’s the subject of this latest installment in my ongoing series on proposals to have the government play a greater role in the media sector in the name of sustaining struggling enterprises or “saving journalism.”

As I mentioned here previously, last week I testified at the FCC’s first “Future of Media” workshop on “Serving the Public Interest in the Digital Era.” (@3:29 mark of video).  It was a great pleasure to testify alongside the all-star cast there that day, which included the always-provocative Jeff Jarvis of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.  He delivered some very entertaining remarks and vociferously pushed back against many of the ideas that others were suggesting about “saving journalism.” Jeff is a very optimistic guy–far more optimistic than me, in fact–about the prospect that new media and citizen journalism will help fill whatever void is left by the death of many traditional media operators and institutions. He had a lively exchange with Srinandan Kasi, Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of the Associated Press, that is worth watching (somewhere after the 5-hour mark on the video).

Nonetheless, Jarvis is a enough of a realist to know that it has always been difficult to find resources to fund hard news, which he creatively refers to as “broccoli journalism.”  This is what is keeping the FCC, the FTC (workshop today), and many media worrywarts up at night; the fear that as traditional financing mechanisms falter (advertising, classifieds, subscription revenues, etc) many traditional news-gathering efforts and institutions will disappear. Of course, while it is certainly true we are in the midst of a gut-wrenching media revolution with a great deal of creative destruction taking place, it is equally true that exciting new media business models and opportunities are developing. We shouldn’t over look that, as I argued here and here.

Anyway, a lot of different proposals are being put forth by scholars and policymakers to find new ways to finance news-gathering or “save journalism.” One of the ideas that has been gaining some steam as of late is the idea of crafting a “public interest voucher” or what Robert W. McChesney & John Nichols, authors of the new book The Death and Life of American Journalism, call a “Citizenship News Voucher.”  And McChesney discussed this idea in more detail when he spoke at today’s FTC event on saving journalism. The idea is fairly straightforward: Give every American a voucher (McChesney and Nichols propose $200) to donate money to the non-profit news entity of their choice. The assumption is that this would be an efficient and safe way of channeling money to “broccoli journalism” while avoiding the serious concerns that arise when government officials or agencies are the ones steering the subsidies. McChesney and Nichols go so far as to call the notion “a libertarian’s dream” since “people can support whatever political viewpoint they prefer or do nothing at all.”

Before I critique this notion, let me just reiterate that I am sympathetic to the concern here since I began my life with a journalism degree and I’m a true lover of broccoli journalism. I certainly eat my greens when it comes to news. I’m a National Public Radio supporter and have given $10 per month ($120 per year) to my local NPR affiliate for awhile now. That’s more than I spend on almost any other media product with the exception of my almost two-decade subscription to the Wall Street Journal. And I also subscribe to The Washington Post, National Geographic, and a number of other “broccoli journalism” products. (I gave up my Economist subscription several years ago, which was also quite pricey). I make this investment because I personally love hard news and believe these media entities offer the very best of it.

Nonetheless, the “news voucher” proposal has several problems and is going to fail once implemented anyway.

First, McChesney and Nichols want to sell this scheme as “a libertarian’s dream,” but that’s utter rubbish. I don’t know of any libertarian who dreams of sending more money to the federal government only to win back the right to spend it on “qualifying media entities.” And when they say that “people can support whatever political viewpoint they prefer or do nothing at all,” well, last time I checked people were already free to do whatever they want with their money when it comes to media products! Why do we need to send it to Washington first?

And analogies to educational vouchers don’t work because we long ago decided to treat education as a public good and force everyone to pay for it. Vouchers are only sensible when we absolutely have to force people to spend money on public goods; they help make government spending a tad bit more efficient. While McChesney and Nichols claim in their book that the time has come to treat media as such a public good, most people would not agree, since the private provision of media services has worked quite well for some time—being funded by a mix of advertising and subscription revenues for centuries. They claim that era is over but, as I’ll note below and in a future essay about their book, it is their policies that would end private media by taxing and regulating it to death.

Second, what exactly counts as a “qualifying media entity,” and who makes that call? Can just anybody draw support from this program if they claim to be a “media entity”?  Are we going to let people redeem their vouchers on The National Inquirer or People magazine?  How about The Onion?  Or how about blogs like this one! “This is a risk we are more than willing to take,” McChesney & Nichols say since they are “operating on a gut instinct that people will use their vouchers to fund serious media while reaching into their pockets to pay for copies of The National Inquirer at the supermarket checkout.” (p. 205) Of course, it’s always easier to take such risks when you are playing with other people’s money! But they are fools to believe this idea is going to change the face of journalism in any serious way. The majority of people will spend their vouchers on whatever media outlets and content they are currently consuming, which probably isn’t want McChesney & Nichols (or policymakers) would prefer.

This raises a third concern: How long will it be before government starts attaching more strings to the vouchers? To borrow a headline from The Wall Street Journal from earlier this week, how long will it be before the “Economic Policy ‘Nudge’ Gives Way to a Shove?” This “Nudge” notion is popular in DC these days with the Obama crew thanks to Cass Sunstein’s book of the same name (w/Richard Thaler). But, as I’ve said here before, such “nudging” is rife with elitism since some policymakers imagine they can steer the public’s tastes or behavior in more desirable directions through law. The problem is, some people just don’t much like being nudged by officials from afar and they’ll often take steps to evade it. In this context, there is simply no way to get people to consume what you want it in an age of abundance. I talked about this problem at length in my testimony to the FCC last week. You just can’t make people watch, listen, or read if they don’t want to. As Ellen P. Goodman of the Rutgers-Camden School of Law has noted: “Given the proliferation of consumer filtering and choice, these kinds of interventions are of questionable efficacy. Consumers equipped with digital selection and filtering tools are likely to avoid content they do not demand no matter what the regulatory efforts to force exposure.” Moreover, she rightly argues, “regulation cannot, in a liberal democracy, force viewers to consumer media products they do not think they want in the name of the public interest.” Amen, sister.

So, even though, in theory, the news voucher idea lets consumers figure out how to steer the funds, I sincerely doubt that most of those funds will go toward “broccoli journalism” and other civic-minded content. And once people start  redirecting taxpayer dollars to all sorts of silly stuff that the elites and policymakers don’t like, that’s when the nudge will become a shove and more interventions will follow in the form of “voucher guidance and compliance” hearings, rules, etc.  In essence, you can file this all under the “if you build it they will come” theory of public policy. But, in this case, it’s all wishful thinking because you simply can’t force people to spend money (or pay attention) to things they don’t want to.

There’s final problematic caveat to the McChesney-Nichols variant of the news voucher idea: They would disallow any copyright protection or advertising support for an entity who receives voucher funds. That’s an effort by the authors to steer even more media activity away from the commercial sphere and toward “the public option” for the press. Let’s not forget that McChesney has argued (during this interview the Canadian-based “Socialist Project”) that “the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists,” and that, “unless you make significant changes in the media, it will be vastly more difficult to have a revolution.”  So, it’s important to keep his true intentions in mind when he starts claiming to have found “a libertarian’s dream” of a solution to what ails America’s media sector. [For more details on his intentions, see my essay from last year, “Free Press, Robert McChesney & the “Struggle” for Media.”]

In the meantime, this particular libertarian would like to keep his money and spend it on media as he sees fit, thank you very much!

[I’ve been working on an outline for a book I hope to write surveying technological skepticism throughout history. I first started thinking about this topic two years when I noticed that a great number of recent books about Internet policy could generally be grouped into one of two camps: Internet optimists vs. Internet pessimists. I subsequently penned an essay on the subject that generated a fair bit of attention. So, I figured I must be on to something, and the more Net policy books I read, the more I realized that the divisions between these two camps were growing wider and increasingly heated. Thus, I thought I would share this very rough draft (much of it still in outline form) of the opening chapter of that book I want to write about this great intellectual war over the impact of technology on society. I invite reader input. Update Jan. 2011: I finally published a full-length essay on this topic. You can find it here. ]

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The impact of technological change on culture, learning, and morality has long been the subject of intense debate, and every technological revolution brings out a fresh crop of both pessimists and pollyannas. Indeed, a familiar cycle has repeat itself throughout history whenever new modes of production (from mechanized agriculture to assembly-line production), means of transportation (water, rail, road, or air), energy production processes (steam, electric, nuclear), medical breakthroughs (vaccination, surgery, cloning), or communications techniques (telegraph, telephone, radio, television) have appeared on the scene.

The cycle goes something like this. A new technology appears. Those who fear the sweeping changes brought about by this technology see a sky that is about to fall. These “techno-pessimists” predict the death of the old order (which, ironically, is often a previous generation’s hotly-debated technology that others wanted slowed or stopped).  Embracing this new technology, they fear, will result in the overthrow of traditions, beliefs, values, institutions, business models, and much else they hold sacred.

The pollyannas, by contrast, look out at the unfolding landscape and see mostly rainbows in the air. Theirs is a rose-colored world in which the technological revolution du jour is seen as improving the general lot of mankind and bringing about a better order.  If something has to give, then the old ways be damned! For such “techno-optimists,” progress means some norms and institutions must adapt—perhaps even disappear—for society to continue its march forward.

Our current Information Revolution is no different. It too has its share of techno-pessimists and techno-optimists. Indeed, before most of us had even heard of the Internet, people were already fighting about it—or at least debating what the rise of the Information Age meant for our culture, society, and economy.

Web 1.0 Fight: Postman vs. Negroponte

In his 1992 anti-technology screed Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, the late social critic Neil Postman greeted the unfolding Information Age with a combination of skepticism and scorn.  Indeed, Postman’s book was a near-perfect articulation of the techo-pessimist’s creed.  “Information has become a form of garbage,” he claimed, “not only incapable of answering the most fundamental human questions but barely useful in providing coherent direction to the solution of even mundane problems.”  If left unchecked, Postman argued, America’s new technopoly—“the submission of all forms of cultural life to the sovereignty of technique and technology”—would 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.”

Postman opened his polemic with the well-known allegorical tale from Plato’s Phaedrus about the dangers of the written word.  Postman reminded us how King Thamus responded to the god Theuth, who boasted of how his invention of writing would improve the wisdom and memory of the masses relative to the oral tradition of learning.  King Thamus shot back, “the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practice it.”  King Thamus then passed judgment himself about the impact of writing on society, saying he feared that the people “will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.”

And so Postman—fancying himself a bit of a modern King Thamus—cast judgment on today’s comparable technological advances and those who would glorify them:

we are currently surrounded by throngs of zealous Theuths, one-eyed prophets who see only what new technologies can do and are incapable of imagining what they will undo. We might call such people Technophiles. They gaze on technology as a lover does on his beloved, seeing it as without blemish and entertaining no apprehension for the future. They are therefore dangerous and to be approached cautiously. … If one is to err, it is better to err on the side of Thamusian skepticism.

Nicholas Negroponte begged to differ. An unapologetic Theuthian technophile, the former director of the MIT Media Lab responded on behalf of the techno-optimists in 1995 with his prescient polemic, Being Digital.  It was a paean to the Information Age, for which he served as one of the first high prophets—with Wired magazine’s back page frequently serving as his pulpit during the many years he served as a regular columnist.

Appropriately enough, the epilogue of Negroponte’s Being Digital was entitled “An Age of Optimism” and, like the rest of the book, it stood in stark contrast to Postman’s pessimistic worldview.  Although Negroponte conceded that technology indeed had a “dark side” in that it could destroy much of the old older, he believed that was inevitable, but also not cause for much concern. “Like a force of nature, the digital age cannot be denied or stopped,” he insisted, and we must learn to appreciate the ways “digital technology can be a natural force drawing people into greater world harmony.” (This sort of techno-determism is a theme we would see on display in many of the works by other Internet optimists that followed in Negroponte’s footsteps.)

To Postman’s persistent claim that America’s technopoly lacked a moral compass, Negroponte again conceded the point but took the glass-is-half-full view: “Computers are not moral; they cannot resolve complex issues like the rights to life and to death. But being digital, nevertheless, does give much cause for optimism.”  His defense of the digital age rested on the “four very powerful qualities that will result in its ultimate triumph: decentralizing, globalizing, harmonizing, and empowering.” Gazing into his techno-crystal ball in 1995, Negroponte forecast the ways in which those qualities would revolutionize society:

The access, the mobility, and the ability to effect change are what will make the future so different from the present. The information superhighway may be mostly hype today, but it is an understatement about tomorrow. It will exist beyond people’s wildest predictions. As children appropriate a global information resource, and as they discover that only adults need learner’s permits, we are bound to find new hope and dignity in places where very little existed before.

In many ways, that’s the world we occupy today; a world of unprecedented media abundance and unlimited communications and connectivity opportunities.

But the great debate about the impact of digitization and information abundance would not end with Postman and Negroponte. Theirs would only be Act I in a drama that continues to unfold, and it is growing more heated and complex with each new character that comes on the stage.

Web War II

The disciples of Postman and Negroponte are a colorful, diverse lot. The players in Act II of this drama occupy many diverse professions—journalists, technologists, business consultants, sociologists, economists, lawyers, etc.—and they are disagreeing even more vehemently and vociferously about the impact of the Internet and digital technologies than Postman and Negroponte did.

In Exhibit 1, I have listed the Internet optimists and pessimists and list their key works.

In Exhibit 2, I have sketched out the major lines of disagreement between these two camps and divided those disagreements into (1) Cultural / Social beliefs vs. (2) Economic / Business beliefs.

When you boil it all down, there are two major points of contention between the optimists and pessimists:

1. The impact of technology on learning & culture & the role of experts vs. amateurs in that process.
2. The promise—or perils—of personalization.

The Debate over Learning & Culture

• Internet optimists and pessimists have engaged in heated debates over role of amateur production and benefits of abundant media

• pessimists fear impact of Net and “cult of amateur” on “professional” media

• without “enforceable scarcity” and protection for the “enlightened class,” the pessimists wonder how “high quality” news or “high art” will get funded and disseminated; and they worry about the decline of authority & truth

• optimists argue that new modes of production (namely peer-production) will be an adequate (if not superior) alternative
  • or they believe new business models will evolve to support professional media

• but pessimists argue that all the new choices are largely false choices
  • participatory democracy all bunk (“mob rule” and rumor mill mongering)
  • just more force-fed commercial propaganda; concerns about advertising
  • also worry about “digital sharecropping” where small group of elites make money off backs of free labor

• optimists counter that Web 2.0 offers real choices and voices
  • optimists argue that many (perhaps most) aren’t in it for the money
  • they do it for love of knowledge & “free culture”

• pessimists argue that “free” culture isn’t free at all; often just parasitic copying / piracy
  • could have profound ramifications for future of news, journalism, “high culture”
  • fear loss of trusted intermediaries & authorities
  • could “dumb down” the masses

• the centrality of Wikipedia to the discussion serves as a microcosm of the entire debate
  • does Wikipedia mark the decline of authority?
  • what is “truth,” the pessimists ask? [“truthiness” fear, a la S. Colbert & Manjoo]
  • who and what can be trusted if everyone is considered an authority?
  • on the other hand, what if it works (at least reasonably well)?
  • what does that tell us about peer production / crowdsourcing?

The Debate over the Promise or Perils of Personalization

• both optimists and pessimists agree that Net & Web 2.0 is leading to more “personalized” media experience
  • but they vehemently disagree on whether that is good or bad
  • what will it mean for participatory democracy?

• pessimists fear Negroponte’s “Daily Me” (i.e., hyper-personalization) leads to:
  • homogenization
  • close-mindedness
  • an online echo-chamber
  • overload of choices + just more corporate brainwashing

• optimists counter that personalization leads to:
  • heterogeneity / chance for everyone to be heard
  • openness
  • exposure to new thinking and opinions
  • abundance of choices = diversity of thought / participation
• in the extreme, some pessimists fear the “mechanization of the soul” and the “surrender to the machine”

• while that may sound a bit over the top, it doesn’t help that some optimists speak of the noosphere & “global consciousness” and seem to long for the eventual singularity

Who’s Got It Right?

• On balance, I believe the optimists generally have the better of the argument today
• But pessimists make many fair points that deserve to be taken seriously; they just need a more reasonable articulation of (some of) those concerns
• The better approach is what I call “pragmatic optimism,” which attempts to rid the optimist paradigm of its kookier, pollyannish thinking while also taking into account some of the very legitimate concerns raised by the pessimists, but rejecting its Luddite fringe in the process.

Thoughts on the Pessimists…

• First and foremost, the pessimists need better spokespersons! Or, they at least need a more moderated, less hysterical tone when addressing concerns raised by technological progress (many of which are quite legitimate).

• It’s often difficult to take the pessimists seriously when they persist with their seeming outright hostility to most forms of technological progress / change. Every one of them claim they are not a Luddite, and often I believe them. But the tone of some of their writing, and the thrust of some of their recommendations, have clear Luddite tendencies.

• Moreover, their endless name-calling and derision for the digital generation is, at times, just as insulting and immature as they “mob” they repeatedly castigate in their works. Too often, their criticism devolves into philosophical snobbery and blatant elitism. Constantly looking down their noses at digital natives and all “amateur” production doesn’t help them win any converts.

• It’s quite shocking how the pessimists have almost nothing good to say about Wikipedia and demonize it endlessly. Much the same goes for open source and other collaborative efforts. They don’t appear willing to accept the possibility of any benefits coming from collective efforts. And they wrongly treat the rise of collective / collaborative efforts as a zero-sum game; they seem to imagine it represents a net loss of individual effort & “personhood.” That simply doesn’t follow.

• Most importantly, the pessimists need to come to grips with the Information Revolution and offer more constructive and practical solutions to legitimately difficult transitional problems created by disintermediating influences of the digital technologies and Net.

• The nostalgia the pessimists typically espouse for the past is a common refrain of cultural and technological critics who fear that the “good ‘ol days” are behind us and the current good-for-nothing generation and their new-fangled gadgets are steering us straight into a moral abyss.  The truth typically proves less cataclysmic, of course.  The great thing about humans is that we adapt better than other creatures. When it comes to technological change, resiliency is hard-wired into our genes.  We learn how to use the new tools that are given to us and gradually assimilate them into our lives and culture.  Indeed, we have lived through more radical revolutions than the Information Revolution. We can adapt and learn to live with some of the legitimate difficulties & downsides of the Information Age.

• The pessimists are at their best when highlighting the very legitimate concerns about the challenges that accompany technological change, including the impact of the digital revolution on “professional” media and the decline of authority among trusted experts and intermediaries.
  • we absolutely don’t want to lose all that
  • there are real benefits associated with it
  • and we need to find a way to fund “professional” media / art going forward

• But, practically speaking, what would the pessimists have us do if we can’t mitigate these problems? Would they roll back the clock with burdensome restrictions? As Ben Casnocha noted recently: “the wind at the backs of all techno-optimists … [is] the forward momentum of technological development. You cannot turn back the clock. It is impossible to envision a future where there is less information and fewer people on social networks. It is very possible to envision increasing abundance along with better filters to manage it. The most constructive contributions to the debate, then, heed Moore’s Law in the broadest sense and offer specific suggestions for how to harness the change for the better.”  That’s what many pessimists have failed to do in their works.

Thoughts on the Optimists…

• The optimists currently have the better of the debate as the abundance of Web 2.0 riches is generally benefiting culture / society.

• Relative to the past it is almost impossible to see how one could argue society has not benefited from the Internet and new digital technologies. The Digital Revolution has greatly empowered masses and offered them more informational inputs.

• An age of abundance is certainly preferable to an age of information scarcity!

• But optimists need to be less Pollyanna-ish and avoid becoming the “technopolists”  (or digital utopians) that Postman feared were taking over our society
  • Way too much Rousseauian romanticism at work in some optimist writings. All this talk of the Net “remaking man” or human nature is pure rubbish.
  • Not all change is good change; the optimists need to be mature enough to understand and address the occasional downsides of digital life without dismissing the critics.
  • And they need to acknowledge that sometimes the wisdom of crowds really can = the stupidity of crowds (when does collective intelligence devolve into herd mentality?) And all this crazy talk of “the hive mind” and the “noosphere” must end.  Some of optimists sound like they long for life in The Matrix; bring on the Singularity!  That’s when you know an optimists has crossed over into the realm of quixotic techno-utopianism.

• Optimists often overplay the benefits of collective intelligence, collaboration, and the role of amateur production.  They need to frame Wiki / peer-production models as a complement to professional media, not a replacement for it.
  • Could The New York Times really be cobbled together by amateurs each day?
  • Why aren’t there any really compelling open source video games?
  • There is a big difference between “remix culture” and “rip-off culture”
  • “The Long Tail” is not “the future of all business”; but it is an increasingly important part of it, and it is wonderful that it is so much more accessible than it was in the past.
  • Will we really be better off if all professionals & intermediaries disappear? Optimists play the “old media just don’t get it” card too often and snobbishly dismiss all their concerns and efforts to reinvent themselves

• Optimists need to place technological progress in context and appreciate that, as Postman argued, there are some moral dimensions to technological progress that deserve attention.

• Of course, on the other hand, some of those moral consequences are profoundly positive, which the pessimists usually fail to appreciate or even acknowledge.

Conclusion: Toward “Pragmatic Optimism”

• Generally speaking, I believe the optimists currently have the better of the debate. It is impossible for me to believe that we were better off in an era of information poverty & un-empowered masses.

• But there’s a kernel of truth to what the pessimists predict about how the passing of the old order leaving society without some things that might be worth preserving.  And they are certainly correct that each of us should think about how to better balance new technologies and assimilate them into our lives.

• The sensible middle ground position is “pragmatic optimism”: We should embrace the amazing technological changes at work in today’s Information Age but do so with a healthy dose of humility and appreciation for the disruptive impact and pace of that change. [See my “Pragmatic (Internet) Optimist’s Creed” below]

• We need to think about how to mitigate the negative impacts associated with technological change without adopting the paranoid tone or Luddite-ish recommendations of the pessimists.

• And it is important for us to personally exercise some personal restraint in terms of the role technology plays in our life. While pessimists from Plato and Postman certainly went too far, there is a kernel of truth to their claim that, taken to an extreme, technology can have a negative impact on life and learning.  We need to focus on the Aristotelian mean. We must avoid neo-Luddite calls for a return to “the good ‘ol days” on the one hand, while also rejecting techno-utiopian Pollyanna-ism on the other

• Regardless, the old Theuth-Thamus debate about the relationship between technological change and its impact on culture and society will continue to rage. There is no chance this debate will die down anytime soon. And just wait till virtual reality goes mainstream!  Oh brother, now that is going to be a lively debate. I might turn into a Thamusian once I find my son playing a virtual gangster or pimp in “Grand Theft Auto 12: The Immersive Experience.”

• Nonetheless, generally speaking, I remain quite bullish about the prospects for technology to generally improve the human condition.

The Pragmatic (Internet) Optimist’s Creed

by Adam Thierer

I believe that the Internet and digital technologies are reshaping our culture, economy, and society in most ways for the better, but not without some serious heartburn along the way.

I believe that the world of information abundance that has dawned is vastly superior to the world of information poverty that we just left. But I also understand that not all information is equal and that that the rise of abundance raises concerns about information overload, objectionable content, and the role of “authority” and “truth.”

I believe the era of traditional Mass Media is coming to an end, but “professional” media institutions and creators continue to play a vital role in the creation, aggregation, and dissemination of news, information, culture, and entertainment. The Internet, however, will force gut-wrenching changes on traditional media institutions and some of the more traditionally vital ones (ex: daily local newspapers) will struggle to re-invent themselves, or may wither away entirely. And while I believe that “professional” journalism faces very serious challenges from the rise of the Internet and user-generated content, but I also believe that hybrid forms of news-gathering and reporting are offering society exciting new ways to learn about the world around them.

I believe Wikipedia is an amazing example of collection action / intelligence at work, but I also understand it is not without flaws and limitations. I believe Wikipedia is a wonderful complement, but not a complete substitute, for other media and information sources and inputs.

I believe that free and open source software (FOSS) has produced enormous social / economic benefits, but I do not believe that FOSS (or “wiki” models) will replace all proprietary business models or methods.  Each model or mode of production has its place and purpose and they will continue to co-exist going forward, albeit in serious tension at times.

I believe the Long Tail is a powerful phenomenon, but not “the future of all business.” It is now a more important part of the future of business, but not the entirety of it. But it is wonderful that it is more accessible than ever and that we have found ways to monetize it to benefit less well know creators and innovators.

I believe there is a difference between “remix culture” and “ripoff culture.”  Remix culture generally enhances and extends culture and creativity. Blatant content piracy, on the other hand, can discourage the creative efforts of the citizenry and deprive some of society’s most gifted creators of the incentive to produce culturally beneficial works. Likewise, hacking, circumvention, and reverse-engineering all play an important and legitimate role in our new digital economy, but one need not accept the legitimacy of those activities when conducted for nefarious purposes (think identity theft or chip-modding to facilitate video game piracy.)

I believe that the Internet has empowered the masses and created a world of “pro-sumers” that gives every man, woman, and child a soapbox on which to speak to the world. But that does not mean that all of them will have something interesting to say, and I won’t praise user-generated content as a good in and of itself. It’s quality, not volume, that counts.

I believe that the Internet’s empowering nature has changed much about society and culture, but I do not believe in the romanticism some espouse about how the Net “remaking man” or changing human nature in any fundamental way. The Internet does not liberate us from all earthly constraints and it cannot magically solve all of civilization’s problems.

I believe that the Internet is reinvigorating deliberative democracy and giving us increased exposure to a breathtaking diversity of views previously inaccessible. On the other hand, I understand that some will often seek out only those views that reinforce their pre-existing biases.

I believe in the liberating power of freedom of speech and expression, and appreciate that the Internet and the rise of user-generated content has given us a world of unprecedented information and cultural riches. I also understand, however, that unrestricted freedom of speech and expression permits an increase in the prevalence of objectionable, even loathsome, speech and content. On net, however, (excuse the pun) the Internet is the most important medium of human communication and expression yet.

In sum, there are more reasons to be optimistic than pessimistic about the Internet and its role in shaping our lives, culture, economy, and society. But that doesn’t mean it will be all roses going forward.

­­­­___

Additional Reading (from me):

• Two Schools of Internet Optimism
• The Digital Decade’s Definitive Reading List: Internet & Info-Tech Policy Books of the 2000s
• Grouping Recent Net Books: Internet Optimists vs. Pessimists
• Can Humans Cope with Information Overload? Tyler Cowen & John Freeman Join the Debate
• Book Review: Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in the a Connected Age
• Book Review: Jaron Larnier’s You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto
• Book Review: A Better Pencil by Dennis Baron
• Book Review: Lee Siegel’s Against the Machine
• Book Review: Nick Carr’s Big Switch and The Shallows
• Book Review: Digital Barbarism by Mark Helprin
• Thoughts on Andrew Keen, Part 1: Why an Age of Abundance Really is Better than an Age of Scarcity
• Thoughts on Andrew Keen, Part 2: The Dangers of the Stasis Mentality
• The 10 Most Important Info-Tech Policy Books of 2009
• The Most Important Tech Policy Books of 2008

Additional Reading (from others):

• Plato on writing
• Cyberspace and Information Overload (by Tim Lee)
• Michiko Kakutani essay in the New York Times, “Texts Without Contexts”
• Andrew McAfee’s terrific essay “I Know I’m Not the Only Internet Optimist…” from his blog
• the great PBS documentary about these issues: “Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier” (+ my thoughts on the film)
• a video from a Family Online Safety Institute event about the PBS documentary that features a discussion about Internet optimism vs. pessimism
• Gordon Crovitz of The Wall Street Journal asks “Is Technology Good or Bad?”
• Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal argues that “Information Overload is Nothing New“
• “Technology Sabbaths and Other Strategies for the Digitized World,” by Michael Sacasas
• “Are We Too Plugged In? Distracted vs. Enhanced Minds“, by Aaron Saenz at the Singularity Hub blog

• and here’s a great video from 1995 featuring the late Neil Postman with his pessimistic take on cyberspace..

Also, courtesy of the Brain Pickings blog, check out this amazing 1972 documentary based on Alvin Toffler’s famous 1970 book, Future Shock. It perfectly foreshadowed so many of today’s technology policy debates.

Interesting piece from Jeff Jarvis about “Google Bigotry,” or his belief that “media people are going after Google’s success for no good reason other than their own jealousy.”  Jarvis argues that reporters penning hard-nosed stories about Google are, in reality, just a bunch of envious cry-babies:

newspaper people will use their last drops of ink to complain about Google’s success and try to blame it for their own failures rather than changing their own businesses. ..  It’s not just that they dislike the competition – and they do, for it is a new experience for too many of them. If they were smart, they’d use Google to get more audience and make more money but they don’t know how to (or rather, they’d prefer not to change). No, the problem is that Google represents change and a new world they’ve refused to understand.

Well, yes and no.  I don’t believe that every story penned about Google by a mainstream media reporter is rooted in envy, and certainly not the one that Jarvis alludes to as prompting him to pen this piece.  Jarvis apparently received an inquiry from a French journalist at Le Monde asking for comment about “an article about Google facing a rising tide of discontent concerning privacy and monopoly.”  That doesn’t necessarily sound like an unreasonable journalistic inquiry to me. So, I’m not sure it’s fair to accuse every journalist who calls with a hard-nosed question about privacy and antitrust as being guilty of “Google bigotry.”

That being said, some journalists are likely feeling a bit miffed about Google’s recent success, thinking it comes at their expense, and, therefore, their envy might be prompting some of them to pen attack stories on the company.  I think Jarvis in on stronger ground, however, in asserting that most privacy and antitrust complaints about Google are unfounded, and also based on envy. Indeed, Berin Szoka and I have have been cataloging the complaints that we believe are driven by an irrational form of corporate envy we call “Googlephobia.”  And in prior years we saw a similar form of Microsoft-bashing at work that we still have with us today. That’s why I think Jarvis is on to something when he notes that Google-bashing represents a broader sociological phenomenon:

Do some people complain about Google? Yes, it is often the same people who complain about the internet and about change and technology and simply use Google as their target simply because it is so big and so innovative.

In one sense, this gets back to my ongoing discussion of the debate between “Internet optimists &  pessimists” regarding  the impact of the Internet and digital technology on our lives.  I’m what you might call a “pragmatic Internet optimist” because I generally believe the Internet is reshaping our culture, economy, and society in most ways for the better, but not without some heartburn along the way. But there are plenty of Internet pessimists out there who have a deep sense of unease with the Digital Revolution and life in the Information Age and only focus on the disruptions caused by this transition.  Thus, because Google is in so many ways intertwined and identified with this digital revolution, it is more likely they will become the scapegoat for every supposed problem the Internet skeptics identify.

But, let’s not lose sight of the broader psychological or sociological phenomenon at work here when we talk about corporate-bashing more generally.  The root of this problem really is envy.  In his great book, Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour (1966), the German sociologist Helmut Schoeck noted that, although it is part of life, when taken to extremes, “Envy can also turn man to destruction.” “The envious man thinks that if his neighbor breaks a leg, he will be able to walk better himself,” he noted. Schoeck also discussed the “harm envy, or its institutionalized consideration, can do to the process of economic growth” and pointed out how market success almost always breeds bitter reactions and responses:

It is virtually impossible to undertake innovations in a society, to improve or even to to develop an economy process, without becoming unequal. But when can a leader or innovator ever be sure that he will not incur the ill-will of those who do not immediately benefit from his activity?

That’s essentially the problem Google faces today, just as Microsoft did before them. They’ve built better mousetraps and the world beat a path to their doors to use them — and damn quick. And they got big and rich quick, too.  What isn’t there to envy about their success!  Who wouldn’t want to be in their shoes? And when that envy incentivizes further innovation to knock them off their perches, that’s a great thing.  But far too often envy just breeds contempt for success and leads to calls to — as Schoeck put it — “institutionalize envy”  by having the government confiscate wealth or innovations “for the public good.”  Microsoft has been living with this nightmare for over a decade, and Google is now facing similar regulatory problems as its enemies list growing longer by the day.  Antitrust simply becomes the club to deliver the envious blow.

Finally, speaking of antitrust, Jarvis has some things to say in his essay about the substantive accusations of monopoly and privacy violations by Google that I think are generally correct:

Google is not a monopoly. It is a competitive company and it took advertising dollars for one simple reason: because advertisers found a better deal there – buying performance, not scarcity, with Google sharing their risk – than they ever found in our old media… Privacy? That is an overused word. The issue is not privacy, as I say in my book. It is control. You should also look at the benefits of publicness, which come when we share things about ourselves and find others like us. If you have problems with privacy then you have problems with every member of Facebook and its clones across the world and the entire generation that made social sites huge.

This catfight between Ron Rosenbaum of Slate and Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine about the future of journalism in the Internet Age is quite a heated affair. But what I found most interesting about it is that it reflects one element of the Net “optimist — pessimist” divide that I have been writing about here recently. Specifically, it touches on the divide over whether the Internet and digital technologies are reshaping the media marketplace and the field of journalism for better or for worse.

Rosenbaum is playing the pessimist role here and asking some sharp questions about the advice being dished out by “Web futurists” and “new-media gurus” as it relates the reversing the decline of the journalism profession. Rosenbaum says that the problem with Jarvis is that:

he’s become increasingly heartless about the reporters, writers, and other “content providers” who have been put out on the street by the changes in the industry. Not only does he blame the victims, he denies them the right to consider themselves victims. They deserve their miserable fate — and if they don’t know it, he’ll tell them why at great length. Sometimes it sounds as if he’s virtually dancing on their graves.

Jarvis — a quintessential Net optimist if their ever was one — responds with his usual flare and says that all he is doing is “holding journalists responsible for the fate of journalism” and trying to show them and industry a better path forward. Then he goes after Rosenbaum as follows:

He whines and prefers to mock me for going to conferences, advising news companies, and teaching journalists (helping to train more of them, not end up with fewer of them). I’m not sure what he’d rather have me do: Sit in my room and mope, sitting shiva for the past? Refuse to discuss the future of journalism? Tell newspapers when they call asking for brainstorming to fuck off and die? Would that be in solidarity with my hack brethren who did too little to transform journalism in the last 13 years of the web?

Like I said, it’s a heated affair and I’m sure it will continue. Just to throw in my own 2 cents… As I pointed out a few days ago in my essay about why I am a “pragmatic optimist“:

I believe the era of traditional Mass Media is coming to an end, but “professional” media institutions and creators continue to play a vital role in the creation, aggregation, and dissemination of news, information, culture, and entertainment. The Internet, however, will force gut-wrenching changes on traditional media institutions and some of the more vital ones (ex: daily local newspapers) will struggle to re-invent themselves, or may wither away entirely. And I believe that “professional” journalism faces very serious challenges from the rise of the Internet and user-generated content, but I also believe that hybrid forms of news-gathering and reporting are offering society exciting new ways to learn about the world around them.

Having said that, I am somewhat sympathetic to the critique Rosenbaum sets forth in his piece. I have always enjoyed Jarvis, but sometimes his writing (like that of many Pollyanna-ish Net optimists) gets a bit tedious in blaming the disintermediated individuals or industries for not seeing what was coming. The fact is, the Internet has caught us all off-guard and few of us could have predicted, or planned for, the sweeping changes it has ushered in.