JAMES PETHOKOUKIS ON “IRRATIONAL TECH PESSIMISM.”

So he seems mostly to describe people who aren’t excited about recent news on room-temperature superconductivity and fusion power. My own muted response is based on lots of exciting reports in both fields over the years that haven’t panned out. Maybe this time is different — I fully expect that at some point we’ll have both — but at this late date a wait-and-see attitude seems wholly rational.

The other kind of pessimism, though, is really pessimism about humans and institutions. Technologies that would excite me in a flourishing liberal democracy with competent, trustworthy institutions — which we emphatically do not have today — excite me less in a less wholesome world where abuse of power seems not merely the norm, but the goal.