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March 17, 2006
ANDREW KEEN REVIEWS AN ARMY OF DAVIDS in The Weekly Standard.
He seems to think that I'm some sort of hippie. That's me!
UPDATE: Joel Miller emails:
This is my favorite line:
"Perhaps the future will be like the 1970s, with the self once more supremely ascendant. In this digitalized idyll, wi-fi will replace marijuana and the ashram will be transformed into the always-on Internet café."
Glenn, youre like the gooiest guru I know, man. Whats the sound of one modem connecting?
Om modem padme hum.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Robert Racansky emails: "Shouldn't that be 'GUIest guru?'" Heh.
Hippie-talk aside, I'm actually a bit bemused by people who see the book as utopian or pollyannaish. After all, I talk about the substantial danger of human extinction within the next thousand years (and argue that Stephen Hawking's thousand-year horizon is too optimistic). I guess compared to Al Gore or Paul Ehrlich or other dystopian writers, I seem that way, since I'm not shouting that the end is nigh, but still . . . My point, rather, is that the changes I describe are coming whether you like them or not, and that we'd better find a way to help them turn out well.
As for Keen's complaint that I fail to address the "crucial" question of "whether or not man is inherently good" -- well, that question could support a book, or a thousand books, on its own. And has. While I agree that it's an important (if, perhaps, difficult to resolve) topic, it seemed like something of a digression in the context of my own work. At any rate, Keen just seems to dislike the notion of indivdual empowerment -- which he has elsewhere called "Socrates' nightmare" -- and on that point we simply disagree.
MORE: Well, not everyone thinks I'm a utopian: "Reynolds doesn't hold a utopian view of technology and the market in which the future holds only unbridled health and wealth if we would just embrace it. But neither does he give in to a pessimistic view that foresees a dystopian future full of tyranny and oppression where technological might makes right."
Of course, given the tone of most futurist writing these days, simply not being dystopian may make me seem pollyannaish by comparison.
posted at 02:08 PM by Glenn Reynolds
