The same people who regret cell phones and blogs have warned about every improvement in people’s lives, beginning with the hand-held mirror. Contrary to the warning about the grave effects of blogs and cell phones, good and evil are not embedded in objects themselves. It all depends on how we use them. Cell phones are popular because they are useful for people in their daily lives. That seems like a good enough reason to recommend them. The same is true of blogs. Technology improves our lives which is why it succeeds in the marketplace. What’s to regret? [Full Article]
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/3404/the-alleged-dangers-of-progress/
The Alleged Dangers of Progress
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Same goes for all those attacks on SUV drivers couched in enviromentalist/road safety rhetoric.
Gee, I get to be the first person to mention firearms?
Any time someone mentions “can be used for good or ill” I am reminded of the witchhunts against people who peacefully own firearms because they’re easier targets (gee, how English is shot through with firearms terminology!) than the criminals who always find a way to abuse others regardless of the tools.
I came up with a T-shirt slogan a few years ago: The only weapon is a sharp mind. Other things are tools.
Since it is now so obvious that “harm” can come to us from many sources other than the drug companies, wouldn’t it be a dandy idea to have all new technologies studied, tested and “approved” prior to being released on a non-expert public? This could be achieved via FDA-like bureaus. I, for one, am in no position to comprehend the long-term ill-effects which might accrue from my willy-nilly use of such potentially dangerous items as digital cameras and MP3 players. And after all, we pay our leaders good money to look after us. Seems to me they’ve dropped the ball on letting all this new techy stuff come to market without thouroughly investigating and legislating out all of the conceivable harms that could appear. I’m middle-aged, so any harm I might suffer would probably be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. But if not for me, at least let it be done “for the children”!
It seems that it is a pastime of those concerned with collectivist ethics to make up problems where there are none. The so-called “problems” associated with technologies such as cell-phones can be solved by private property. Movie theatres can ban cell-phones throughout the building. Certainly, it is forbidden to talk on the cell-phone in the actual “room” showing the movie, and people doing such can promptly be kicked out of the the threatre. The solution here is very simple: people can vote with their dollars. If it bothers you that much that someone’s talking on their cell-phone, you can choose to eat, shop, or watch movies someplace else.
Regarding the paranoia about the predominance of “white bloggers”, so what? One of the nice things about the internet is that ideas usually triumph over personalities. This is facilitated by “handles” and pseudonames, such as my handle, “dh003i”, on many forums. Here, on this blog, people can only tell that I am a man (“David”). Other characteristics are not relevant, nor are they thought about much even if known. People tend to be judged more on the quality of their thought.
Mr. Suitt claims, “It’s white people linking to other white people!” That is insane paranoia. Of the articles I read, note the name of the author (or handle) as a future reference in screening articles. I hardly try to figure out if they’re white or not in deciding whether or not I wish to link to them.
“Suitt challenged people to each find 10 bloggers who weren’t male, white or English-speaking—and link to them.”
This is also ridiculous. The only thing that should be considered is the quality of, and interest of, ideas. This is what the anti-discrimination crowd has wanted for ages, right? That people be judged almost purely by their ideas and character, and not by the color of their skin? The internet makes this largely achievable, with the exception of extremist racists, who will take great measure to find out the race of the posting author. Even when blogs have pictures of the author on them, the emphasis is still on what is written. Or, maybe, this isn’t what these people want at all: maybe what they really want is some kind of reverse-discrimination.
It seems like these people are really upset that they can’t exercise the same kind of control over the highly decentralized internet, blogosphere, file-sharing networks, and so-on and so-forth, that they can over the mainstream media. This is something for which we should be grateful, and it is due to the architecture of the internet.
However, those who appreciate this shouldn’t take it for granted. As Lawrence Lessig notes in Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, the architecture of the internet can be changed, and “code is law”, as he points out. Although I obviously disagree with his clear anti-corporate bias (what we should really be concerned about is the gov’t trying to change the architecture of the internet).
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