Technoutopianism
I was greatly enjoying Christine Rosen's takedown of Glenn Reynold's techno-utopian brand of libertarianism, but kept getting bugged by her insistence that this reflected a general "blogger" worldview than simply a point of view of which Instapundit is a prominent representative. Near the end of the piece, though, she tries to justify the extension to the blogosphere as a whole:
And, unfortunately, it's not just libertarians like Reynolds who share this faith in the power of the market to generate news and opinion. Even if liberal blogs like Daily Kos and Atrios aren't so enamored of nanotechnology or space exploration, they share Reynolds's triumphalism about the medium. In fact, techno-utopianism is the one sentiment that unites both left and right in the blogosphere.
This is, I think, what gets bloggers all mad at the "MSM" -- that's literally the entire extent of the argument on this score. For one thing, I really don't think Atrios does share Reynolds' triumphalism about the medium. Take this for example:
Regular readers know I've never engaged in serious (as opposed to tongue-in-cheek) blog triumphalism. And, while I haven't written about it all that much, I think the idea that bloggers will replace reporters is just a bunch of wankery.
But, I think it is true that bloggers, much like political talk radio, are a threat to the influence of the punditocracy. And, in the net that's a good thing. I don't endorse a system in which a few select individuals are granted license to pontificate authoritatively on an infinite number of subjects. Breaking the oligopoly by reducing entry barriers, even if doing so doesn't improve the average quality of commentary, has value in increasing diversity of commentators if nothing else.
That seems like a very measured and accurate take on the situation. The DailyKos crowd does, I think, tend toward a greater degree of triumphalism about blogging especially (obviously) as a tool of political organizing. Even this, though, is relatively measured. Unfortunately, I don't have the book in front of me, but I recall being pleasantly surprised by a passage in Crashing the Gates which was all about recognizing the limits of blogging as an endeavor and noting the fundamental importance of traditional organizations like unions to progressive politics.
That quibble aside, conflating the idea that bloggers left and right are enthusiastic about blogging with the general idea of techno-utopianism winds up missing what's interesting and distinctive about techno-utopianism. Reynolds doesn't merely think that the Internet and information technology will revolutionize the communications/media industry in dramatic and beneficial ways, he thinks that, in general, technological improvement will essentially solve all major social problems without the need for collective action. This is a distinct ideological viewpoint that I don't think you'll find any liberals sharing.
Liberals -- including liberal bloggers -- tend to think that we need new and/or improved institutions of global governance to combat such problems as global warming and nuclear proliferation. Reynolds thinks that the former can be solved without regulation by mysterious technological improvements while the latter can be solved because deregulation will lead to private sector colonization of space thus allowing humanity to survive despite the risks of nuclear or biological warfare. These are very different points of view and deserve to be treated as such.
I never felt that Atrios was a triumphalist, but even on the liberal side of blogistan, triumphalism is the rule rather than the exception. Markos himself may or may not be triumphalist (I think he is) but certainly the tone of Daily Kos as a whole is one of triumphalism. The general tone of Kos diarists (engaging in that well worn "read the press - bash the press" blog routine)is that the journalists are all out to get them, because they the journalists are secretly jealous of the Kos diarists and fear their usurption by the great blogging proletariat.
June 19, 2006 2:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
"... technological improvement will essentially solve all major social problems without the need for collective action. This is a distinct ideological viewpoint that I don't think you'll find any liberals sharing."
Given that "liberalism" today is essentially defined by an insistance that problems must be solved by collective action, even if alternative solutions appear to be available, that's almost a tautology.
June 19, 2006 3:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Stirling Newberry and Ian Welsh over at BOPNews are interested in the intersection of information distribution technology and politics.
A New World ...as an example. There are some very interesting posts in the archives, some quite arcane. Many are revolutionary in tone.
"Liberals -- including liberal bloggers -- tend to think that we need new and/or improved institutions of global governance to combat such problems as global warming and nuclear proliferation"
Not so sure about "new improved" 19th and 20th century models and paradigms as a possible solution. Thinking "macro" might be the problem, and the nation-state, int'l corporation, big media, better UN and WTO/IMF simply in the way. They may be tools progressives can never control, because of their nature.
Both Matt and Reynolds might be in old-think.
June 19, 2006 3:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, it's more like, "The MSM are stenographers at best and Rove-talking-point-spouting at worst; instead of holding the government accountable by bringing the facts to light, they're happily rolling over for the administration." I mean, you may remember this thing called the war in Iraq, where the media was more than happy to swallow any number of lies, as they didn't want to seem "unpatriotic."
June 19, 2006 4:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
he thinks that, in general, technological improvement will essentially solve all major social problems without the need for collective action.
I am not clear that technology will solve all social problems because I'm not sure that all social problems can be solved.
Going at it from another angle: the track record of human civilization is that 'government' does not change. It becomes more elaborate over time (like a very large termite nest) and there are things that cannot happen without it, but government itself does not improve and remain that way. Again, on the overall track record, governments (and I am using the term loosely - everything from tribe to kingdom to empire to the UN) tend to start small, grow to cover large expanses of territory and accumulate large amounts of power but the techniques wielded essentially remain the same. We are in Iraq trying to impose a 'good' form of government...by shooting people. Which is the same tactic that was used by the Romans, the Mongols, and the British.
Granted, now we have complicated power structures with experts to decide this sort of thing, but the tools they wield are basically the same and unchanging.
Which I take as saying the historical track record counts. And this historical track records says as best I can read it, that the only form of government that lasts for truly long periods of time is imperial monarchy. But imperial monarchies tend to be stagnant over all.
On the other hand, technology gets better all the time in measurable ways. And most of the improvements in the average life of the last 3000...1000...500...200...100 years seem to all stem from technology. Or techne, really.
Organizations come and go, but the axe is forever, comparatively speaking.
That said, I don't see where techne has solved the problem of government/relations between humans/groups. So I don't see where technology will solve all problems. To say so is simple statement of religious faith, since there's no evidence for it. Likewise, however, is the statement that government will improve if we just put the experts in charge.
For all I know, we'll get a nice gigantic world goverment...and a loon will wind up in charge and proceed to blow up the world. Which would negate both the arguments for ever advancing social progress AND technological progress. (On a historical basis - if we spend 10,000 years developing technology and then blow ourselves up that would tend to sorta negate the argument in favor of technology.)
So I'd agree that Reynold's idea is at odds with progressive ideology, but I'm not sure about this progressive ideology business either. I'm not sure either one has anything to do with liberalism in the original meaning of the term.
Hrmm. That's all.
ash
['For the moment.']
June 19, 2006 9:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Far from "triumphalism," I'd call it fatalism. Most of us leftists see the blogosphere as our last and only hope for fighting rampant wingnuttery. The offline media is cowed and/or owned by the Right. Protest marches and civil disobedience campaigns no longer have any effect on government. And most sadly, even the ballot box has been coopted by Republicans and their high-tech co-conspirators. What are we left with but the Internet?
June 19, 2006 10:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
OK, this is one area where I'm an expert because I've been studing it for several years now. The same math the NSA is using to enable their various TIA-style databases can be used in an open source, transparent, self-organized manner to signifcantly improve the signal/noise ratio of collective activities such as online discussion & activism. It's a practical application of complexity theory called Social Network Analysis (SNA).
We're learning how to manipulate networks of people to make them more (or less) innovative, resilient, efficient, etc., by changing the shape (topology) of the network. You want more fault tolerance? Add secondary backup links here & here. You want to make the whole network collapse into a multitude of disconnected islands? Just take out these 3 second-tier hubs & it's done. You want to make the organization as a whole work smarter & foster innovation better? Promote these 2 guys to manage the projects they're involved in & watch the ideas flow.
It's all math, guys & gals. Not to solve all our problems for us without us having to act collectively but rather to enable us to act collectively & effectively in larger groups than we've ever managed before. What I described above is just a small piece of it & there's still a hell of a lot to be figured out to make it really hum but the outlines are already sketched in.
For anybody who wants to educate themselves on what I'm talking about, check out The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler. It's also available in PDF & wiki format on Benkler.org (which seems to be down right now, grr) & Crooked Timber just held a web seminar on the book as well.
June 20, 2006 12:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
"he thinks that, in general, technological improvement will essentially solve all major social problems without the need for collective action. This is a distinct ideological viewpoint that I don't think you'll find any liberals sharing."
Which, of course, makes the liberals as irrelevant as the conservatives, since technology WILL be the dominant force in the 21st Century and in a manner never before seen in human history - in fact, it will obsolete "human history" as well as "human nature" by the end of the current century.
"Liberals -- including liberal bloggers -- tend to think that we need new and/or improved institutions of global governance to combat such problems as global warming and nuclear proliferation."
Which makes liberals morons because you aren't going to GET "improved institutions of global governance" nor do you need them to combat global warming which will be a non-issue in due time anyway due to technology developments, specifically nanotechnology.
As for nuclear proliferation, get the US, Russia, China, UK, France, etc. - not to mention Israel - to disarm, and nuclear proliferation will be a non-issue as well.
Oh, liberals can't get that done - in their own countries? Then how do they expect to do it anywhere else?
"Reynolds thinks that the former can be solved without regulation by mysterious technological improvements while the latter can be solved because deregulation will lead to private sector colonization of space thus allowing humanity to survive despite the risks of nuclear or biological warfare."
Well, Reynolds is naive, too. However, "mysterious technological improvements" are only "mysterious" to pundits who don't know anything about them.
As for nuclear and biological warfare, they are insignificant to the survival of the species, although in the worst case scenarios they could impede technological progress sufficiently to slow down the Transhuman ascension (something we Transhumans DO intend to do something about.) They are unlikely to eliminate technological progress, and might in fact speed it up.
Finally, "humanity" is not going to survive regardless of the technological developments. "Humanity" needs NOT to survive - it needs to be replaced. And it will be, in this century. "Humanity" will not colonize space, because "colonization" is a human concept, not a Transhuman one. In fact, "survival of the species" is mostly a human concept, not a Transhuman one. Transhumans seek personal survival - they only care about species survival to the degree that the species is necessary for technological progress prior to their own ascension. After that, they can handle their own survival quite nicely, thank you.
Transhumans are as likely to be concerned about their "species" as the average sci-fi dragon - let alone humans.
Bottom line: technology WILL solve all social problems without "collective action" - except "collective action" in the sense of the general focused pursuit of science and technology - which is not what liberals are talking about. When liberals talk "collective action", they mean voting, marching, letter writing campaigns, social organization, etc.
As I always say, email me when this happens to any practical effect...
June 20, 2006 12:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
"On a historical basis - if we spend 10,000 years developing technology and then blow ourselves up that would tend to sorta negate the argument in favor of technology."
Depends on who's left, doesn't it?
"I am not clear that technology will solve all social problems because I'm not sure that all social problems can be solved."
Depends on your definition of a "solution." As William Burroughs put it, "The human problem does not have a solution." He meant it doesn't have a HUMAN solution - it does have a Transhuman solution.
"I don't see where techne has solved the problem of government/relations between humans/groups."
Hang in there - it's coming.
I think Einstein once said something to the effect that you can't solve a problem in terms of itself.
That's the problem with humans. The reason humans look for a religious solution is the instinctive realization that there is no human solution - only a Transhuman one. The Gnostics were some of the first to consider this outside a purely religious framework - as were the Taoists. In the last century a bright guy named Drexler hit upon the solution. In this century we will realize it.
June 20, 2006 1:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
They are - big time.
June 20, 2006 1:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Was that humanzee post on your other blog supposed to be an example of technoutopianism? (what an awkward word, btw?)
June 20, 2006 7:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wow, I had no idea how obnoxious transhumanists were. I just want to go on the record saying I'm not talking about any kind of crap like that.
There's some hard days ahead of us, I think, between global warming, peak oil, H5N1 & other scaled events. What I'm talking about is real & has math to back it up. What they're talking about is a religion, a techno-faith based on watching the Matrix too many times.
If we want to get through those challenges in the least painful way possible, we're going to have to adopt new social/technical strategies that allow us to actually make better decisions & share information more effectively.
That's what I'm about. Just wanted to make that clear.
June 20, 2006 7:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Even Kos's disclaimer is too sanguine for me. I doubt blogs undermine the sway of the pundits. Rather, the blog culture reinforces the mistaken attitude of a generation that hates reading the papers and thinks it can get the news from comedians and bloviators. Unfortunately, that's often the case, too, as when people like Kristoff make at best middling commentators but actually fill in the reporting role that the front page skips (or when Krugman has both excellent commentary and passes on solid reporting from others that the editors feel too embarrassing to include as well).
However, it's far from always the case, and it may sustain the dominance of talking heads and sustain the confusion, too, of hastily expressed conclusions with argument. At least, however, it offers an outlet for the hastily expressed conclusions that the MSM leaves out, and I'll have to settle for that right now, while we mobilize to attempt to regain some voice in the political process.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
June 20, 2006 8:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Who's definition is that? I'm not so sure that it's accurate. I think you have to give some examples rather than just make that blanket statement.
Name a problem liberals believe requires collective action despite the existence of a better alternative solution. (If the alternative solution isn't better, of course collective action is preferable.)
June 20, 2006 8:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
One important ability of the blogs is to point out stories in the MSM that many interested readers would otherwise miss.
No one reads all the big dailies and the wire services every day, not to mention the tons of local papers, but collectively the readers of the bigger blogs do, and they can highlight important stories, just as Josh is trying to do for the '06 elections at TPM.
Not to say that news aggregation is the biggest deal in the world, but I know I'd miss important stories from WaPo and LAT, not to mention San Diego UT, ChiTrib, etc. delaing with Guantanamo, GOP corruption, the Iraq war, corrupt defense contractors, and many other topics.
June 20, 2006 8:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Tawdry self-link: I've written about Reynolds's sci-fi libertarianism here, and that post seems apposite. Short version: he's a 'reactionary fantasist' in a bad-Heinlein mode.
June 20, 2006 9:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think it's a bit of rhetorical escalation to call someone 'triumphalist' if they believe that the tool they are using is an effective one.
Rather than create a utopia, I think the blogosphere may not do more than return the state of public discourse to the level that it was at the turn of the 20th century--with dozens of newspapers in every major city, pamphleteers abounding, and rough-and-tumble yellow journalism being the order of the day.
But that sounds good to me.
June 20, 2006 10:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
In contrast to Atrios, check out Daily Kos's contribution to the current Nation, which has a fine chart of media ownership, plus several interesting commentaries on it. (It should also hit very hard indeed at the credibility of Matt's doubt that media ownership is a real issue.)
Kos there is totally triumphalist. He's the only one to argue that the whole debate over mainstream media bias is now irrelevant. And that argument is dangerous. pbg is wrong, too.
First, there's no evidence that blogs are returning us to an age of more competition. The media is consolidating, and its consolidated voices continue to shape public opinion. During the run-up to Iran, I got to read Gore's fiery speech against it, because I check the Web through such sources as Common Dreams. But the public was tuned into TV. Even now, with blogs more active (and with liberal blogs more consistently antiwar), it mostly just offers a minority of us an alternative.
Second, since when was the days of yellow journalism a golden age for public discourse? There's a reason we miss the period that promoted instead journalistic independence and integrity, as in reporting on Nixon. Sure, Raymond Bonner lost his job under M. L. Rosenthal for reporting seriously on Reagan's Central American paramilitary action, but he did his job. One who prefers the days of "Remember the Maine" should repeat it over over and over until he gets over the nostalgia trip.
http://www.haberarts.com/
June 20, 2006 12:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Even now, with blogs more active (and with liberal blogs more consistently antiwar), it mostly just offers a minority of us an alternative.
Daily readership of dkos is now rivaling many mid-size, regional newspapers, and growing.
Not taking a stand on any of your points, other than there are a significant number of people reading blogs...it's not such a fringe activity anymore.
Have questions about the Cafe? Try here.
June 20, 2006 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not saying the beginning of the twentieth century was a golden age--but it's better than what we've got now.
Maybe a bronze age.
And there's a lot--a whole lot--more to the era's journalism than 'Remember the Maine."
I would rather see William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer, and James Gordon Bennett slagging each other off, calling each other liars, and one-upping each other than the bored courtiers of the current media.
And let's not forget that the age of Hearst was also the age of Ida Tarbell.
June 20, 2006 4:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
My God, you're boring.
June 21, 2006 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink