Nice post by Adam Thierer on The Technology Liberation Front (with whom I have disagreed on other issues; see PFF Closes Its Doors):

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

by Adam Thierer on January 31, 2010 · 13 Comments

[I’ve been working on an outline for a book I hope to write surveying technological skepticism throughout history. I first started thinking about this topic two years when I noticed that a great number of recent books about Internet policy could generally be grouped into one of two camps: Internet optimists vs. Internet pessimists. I subsequently penned an essay on the subject that generated a fair bit of attention. So, I figured I must be on to something, and the more Net policy books I read, the more I realized that the divisions between these two camps were growing wider and increasingly heated. Thus, I thought I would share this very rough draft (much of it still in outline form) of the opening chapter of that book I want to write about this great intellectual war over the impact of technology on society. I invite reader input.]

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