Are You An Internet Optimist or Pessimist? The Great Debate over Technology’s Impact on Society

In an extensive historical analysis, Adam Thierer provides a comparison between internet optimists (“Theuthian Technophiles”) and internet pessimists (“Thamusian Technophobes”).

Evaluating, but not judging, he concludes:

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 […] 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.