TLF at 15: Let the Great Adventure Continue

Today marks the 15th anniversary of the launch of the Technology Liberation Front. This blog has evolved through the years and served as a home for more than 50 writers who have shared their thoughts about the intersection of technological innovation and public policy.

Many TLF contributors have moved on to start other blogs or
write for other publications. Others have gone into other professions where
they simply can’t blog anymore. Still others now just publish their daily
musings on Twitter, which has had a massive substitution effect on long-form blogging
more generally. In any event, I’m pleased that so many of them had a home here
at some point over the past 15 years.

What has unified everyone who has written for the TLF is (1)
a strong belief in technological innovation as a method of improving the human
condition and (2) a corresponding concern about impediments to technological
change. Our contributors might best be labeled “rational
optimists,” to borrow Matt Ridley’s phrase, or “dynamists,” to use Virginia
Postrel’s term. In a
recent essay, I sketched out the core tenets of a dynamist, rational optimist
worldview, arguing that we:

believe there is a symbiotic relationship
between innovation, economic growth, pluralism, and human betterment, but also
acknowledge the various challenges sometimes associated with technological
change;look forward to a better future and reject
overly nostalgic accounts of some supposed “good ‘ol days” or bygone better
eras;base our optimism on facts and historical
analysis, not on blind faith in any particular viewpoint, ideology, or gut
feeling;support practical, bottom-up solutions to hard
problems through ongoing trial-and-error experimentation, but are not wedded to
any one process to get the job done;appreciate entrepreneurs for their willingness
to take risks and try new things, but do not engage in hero worship of any
particular individual, organization, or particular technology.

Applying that vision, the contributors here through the
years have unabashedly defended a pro-growth, pro-progress, pro-freedom vision,
but they have also rejected techno-utopianism or gadget-worship of any sort. Rational
optimists are anti-utopians, in fact, because they understand that hard
problems can only be solved through ongoing trial and error, not wishful
thinking or top-down central planning.

Wisdom and progress are directly correlated with society’s
willingness to experiment with new ideas, tolerate change, and learn from
failures. Writing in 1960, Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek wisely
observed that many intellectuals, “ignore the importance of the freedom of
doing things” and that “[f]reedom of action, even in humble things, is as important
as freedom of thought.”  The two are
inextricably linked, in fact. Technology is simply a means to an end and that
end is material progress and human flourishing. The goal is to expand the range
of life-enriching innovations available to people while also empowering them pursue
lives of their own choosing. But experimentation and freedom of action are
absolutely crucial if we hope to achieve that end.

When thinking about public policy, “freedom of doing things”
can be reconceptualized as “permissionless
innovation.” Generally speaking, innovation and innovators should be
treated as innocent until proven guilty. When forces—governmental or otherwise—conspire
to constrain the general freedom to innovate, they are, in reality, constraining
human creativity and learning, thus limiting our efforts to improve the world
around us.

There can be no greater revolution than the revolution to liberate
the human mind. It is peaceful, collaborative revolution aimed at breaking the
chains that bind our ingenuity and which curtail our ability to pursue
happiness however each of us define it. Accordingly, removing barriers to people
building more and better tools to improve their lot in life has been a priority
of much of the writing here on the TLF.

When searching for a quote to end my next book, I settled on
one from Samuel C. Florman, an
engineer who throughout his life rose to the challenge of defending
technological innovation with remarkable gusto. Commenting on the swelling
ranks of “antitechnologists” he saw around him a generation ago, Florman
perfectly identified the profound danger of giving up on finding new and better
ways of doing things. “By turning our backs on technological change, we would
be expressing our satisfaction with current world levels of hunger, disease,
and privation,” he argued. “Further, we must press ahead in the name of the
human adventure. Without experimentation and change our existence would be a
dull business.”

Defending that “human adventure” has been the goal of all
those contributing to the Tech Liberation Front over the past 15 years because experimentation
and change are the key to our very survival as a species.  I’m looking forward to seeing what the next
15 years of this adventure brings and hope to work with others here and
elsewhere to make sure that all citizens of the world get to enjoy the fruits
of human ingenuity and technological creativity.