{"id":3341,"date":"2009-11-17T16:32:28","date_gmt":"2009-11-18T00:32:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=3341"},"modified":"2009-11-17T16:32:28","modified_gmt":"2009-11-18T00:32:28","slug":"a-counterweight-to-pessimism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/a-counterweight-to-pessimism\/","title":{"rendered":"A counterweight to pessimism?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I of course hearken to my esteemed SR colleague\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Are-Doomed-Reclaiming-Conservative-Pessimism\/dp\/0307409589\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1258504094&amp;sr=1-1\">bracing call <\/a>to gloom.\u00a0 But how could one not feel just a little bit joyful at yet another sign of the grass-roots knowledge explosion that the internet has fostered?\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>an army of volunteer cartographers . . . are logging every detail of neighborhoods near and far into online atlases. From Petaluma to Peshawar, these amateurs are arming themselves with GPS devices and easy-to-use software to create digital maps where none were available before, or fixing mistakes and adding information to existing ones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>How wonderful is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/11\/17\/technology\/internet\/17maps.html?_r=1\">that<\/a>?\u00a0 I don\u2019t possess anywhere near the understanding to be able to imagine where this extraordinary power to generate and share knowledge will lead us, but it seems to me that the results can only be overwhelmingly positive.<!--more-->\u00a0 Yes, of course, there\u2019s internet-enabled pornography and child trafficking, web-based Islamist organizing, and barbaric youth culture multiplied through social networking sties.\u00a0 But the power to aggregate information globally and to connect individuals free of any intervening institutions will surely on balance result in more life-enhancing than life-blighting discoveries.\u00a0 And I\u2019m neither a particular fan of the masses nor an opponent of authority.\u00a0 Yet the internet seems to me a most amazing embodiment of a Hayekian free-market vision of bottom-up innovation.\u00a0\u00a0 At the very least, apart from its democratic uses, the ability to share scientific knowledge instantaneously can only greatly accelerate our ability to overcome such god-given afflictions as disease and vulnerability to natural disasters.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And no, the internet won\u2019t solve such eternal human problems as the abuse of power, ethnic and national animosity, and the failure to socialize certain segments of the population.\u00a0 But it has already allowed the very best that humans have created to be more universally available than at any time in history.\u00a0 That is cause for unqualified celebration&#8211;and even optimism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I of course hearken to my esteemed SR colleague\u2019s bracing call to gloom.\u00a0 But how could one not feel just a little bit joyful at yet another sign of the grass-roots knowledge explosion that the internet has fostered?\u00a0 an army &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/a-counterweight-to-pessimism\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[404],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3341"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3343,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions\/3343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}