sometimes things get worse

T here are many tics of contemporary debate that bother me, but none more so than the enforcement of optimism. To participate in our webby conversation is to be buffeted, over and over again, with the insistence that all change is good, and that anyone who differs from that orthodoxy is a vile creature. Take, for example, Wired editor and serial plagiarist Chris Andersen’s (capital-F, natch) “Free” argument and those who would enforce it. Let me preface all of this by saying that there is