Wired, it should be obvious if you’ve ever opened the magazine or been to the website, is a magazine for technologists. That is, for people who turn to technology to solve humanity’s problems. Or, as is the case with Wall Street Journal columnist and Wired‘s September cover story author Matt Ridley, people who believe in the omnipotence, and apparently, the omniscience, of technology.

Ridley calls himself a “rational optimist,” (it’s the title of his most recent book) which is actually an accurate description of the basic editorial position of Wired and the Wall Street Journal. As a rule, these publications are bullish on science and technology (which they would shorthand as “progress”), and dismissive or hostile toward warnings that every bacchanal brings a hangover. This idea springs directly from the sort of rational optimism Ridley speaks of. If we just stop freaking out, Ridley claims, the ur-technologist, or simply technology itself, will solve our problems. Freaking out seems to mean demanding that the government do something, though he never makes it clear what negative impacts he thinks this fretting or fear actually has. The idea of being a “rational optimist” isn’t really remarkable at all. After all, this worldview under-girds the entire apparatus of global capitalist society.

What is remarkable is that rather than use current examples of problems where political intervention in the market, spurred by all this apocalyptic thinking, is hindering solution-making (here’s one possibility), Ridley decides to use historical examples. The examples he picks all curiously undermine his point. That’s because they all demonstrate just how effective alarmist predictions can be at creating important policy changes.

Continue reading “Wired’s Matt Ridley: Don’t Panic, We Can Dig Ourselves Out of this Hole.”