As someone that now classifies themselves as an optimistic techno realist, because Silicon Valley techbros like Marc Andreesen have propagated a society eating metastic cancer version of it over the 21st century, I found Mike Masnick's year end essay spot on.
"It’s one thing to be a techno optimist. I still very much consider myself to be one. I said years ago that the reason Techdirt exists is to try to advocate against those seeking to hold back innovation, because I believe the advantages of innovation are tremendous. That sounds similar to Marc’s manifesto, but the big difference is that I recognize that part of seeing through to that kind of future, where innovation comes faster and more widely distributed than it would otherwise be, is to not fuck it up in the process...Andreessen’s version is that we should just ignore the bad and the good will magically wipe out all the bad. That’s not just simplistic, it’s ahistorical..."
