SXSW 2012 - The Internet: Threat or Menace?

The Internet: Threat or Menace?
Event	Interactive 2011
Format	Solo
Organizer	Scott Rosenberg – Wordyard LLC/MediaBugs.org
Description	The Internet continues to evolve in unpredictable and often delightful ways, but there are still people who view it as the scourge of civilization. They have always been wrong. Let us count the ways. Each year brings a new crop of curmudgeonly books explaining how the Net is (a) rotting our brains; (b) debasing our culture; (c) seducing our children; (d) undermining our institutions; (e) polarizing our discourse; and (f) robbing artists of their livelihood. These arguments have been thrown at us for two decades now, yet somehow they have failed to slow our embrace of the Net. Many of them have been discredited by events or abandoned by their proponents. Yet the legions of Internet doomsayers keep on replenishing themselves with headline-grabbing pronouncements and book contracts. I will offer a brief yet comprehensive, educational yet humorous survey of 20 years' worth of complaints about the Net -- from Clifford Stoll's "Silicon Snake Oil" to Nick Carr's "The Shallows." There will be flow charts! Choice quotes! Ridiculously off-base predictions and deliciously ironic recantations! Special bonus: lightning-round overview of the history of Internet utopianism.
Questions Answered	What are the principal cases and arguments that critics have made against the Net? Why is there such a perennial supply of anti-Net diatribes? What is the typical profile of an Internet curmudgeon? How has the mainstreaming of the Web and social networking changed the arguments of Internet naysayers? Have the critics of the Net managed to get anything right?
Level	Intermediate
Category	History of Technology
Tags	criticism, history, internet

You might also like:

The Internet: Threat or Menace?