Skip to content
Technology & Innovation

Against Internet Utopias

“The key issue facing everyone in the next decade is figuring out how to use the Internet and how to discern its societal benefits from its over-hyped Utopian promises.”
Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

“‘Whether or not it draws on scientific research, technology is a branch of moral philosophy, not science,’ wrote the anarchic Paul Goodman in The New Reformation, Notes from a Neolithic Conservative, meaning that technology isn’t self-justifying simply because it may solve a scientific or technical problem, it must be examined within the context of what it does for us and how we use it. In other words, the statement that ‘a good watch is a watch that tells the time well’ only has meaning in a society where timing is everything, where we have ritualized and sanctified time keeping. In this context, it is time to stop thinking about the Internet as a kind of liberation theology.”

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Related
With Easter and Passover on the minds of so many millions of Christians and Jews this weekend, so are the deeper themes of renewal, promise, and liberation that these religious […]
The integration of artificial intelligence into public health could have revolutionary implications for the global south—if only it can get online.

Up Next
“A result of a certain kind of overparenting, we are learning, is children who are better prepared for college but less prepared for life.” Lisa Belkin says parenting has become too sacred.