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

2010-02-01

Bookmarked:

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

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.

I'm Sebastian, Sociologist and Interaction Designer. This journal is mostly about bringing together social science and design for inclusive, privacy-focused, and sustainable "human-first" digital strategies. I also tend to a "digital garden" with carefully curated resources.

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