Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Welcome back ...

... Bryan returns to cyberspace. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I just read Bryan's review of Evgeny Morozov's The Net Delusion, and I completely agree with his conclusion: "Human beings make human things and history is a contingent, not a deterministic, narrative. Technology will not free us of these truths, but, if we are lucky, it will make them more evident." Like Bryan, I have no Utopian tendencies. But I found it odd that he did not address Morozov's notion that the state should be expected to resolve the problems he describes. Morozov, it seems to me, is more than just an apostate to cyber-utopianism. He is also an apostate to the faith in individual freedom. Many of his complaints are simply a consequence of individuals exercising that freedom. Oh my, more people are interested in porn than in geopolitics. Nothing surprising about that. Not many people are saints, either. Or monsters, for that matter. The internet didn't create the taste for pornography. It simply made satisfying that taste much easier. Why would anyone think it would have turned all mankind into policy wonks or idealists?


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