Green Energy and ObamaCare had to work because they were shiny and progressive. The messy reality of the technology or the business models for making them work didn’t matter to Obama.
Progressives mistake this brand of ignorant technophilia for being on the side of progress, when really it’s just the flip side of technophobia. The technophobe raised in a push button world in which things just work doesn’t necessarily fear technology; instead he fears the messy details that interfere with his need for instant gratification.
The new lefty Luddite loves gadgets; he just hates the limitations that make them work. He wants results without effort or error. He wants energy without pollution, consensus without experiment and products without industry. The same narcissism that causes him to reject the fact that he has to give something to get something in human affairs leads him to also reject the same principle in technology.
The innovator knows that reality is messy. He lands a probe on a comet while wearing a tacky shirt. The regulator however can only see the shirt. Technology only interests him as a means of controlling people. The shirt matters as much as the comet because both are ways of influencing people.
The left wants technology only as a means of achieving its utopian visions. The technology itself is push button; it means nothing except as a means to an end. The regulator is not thrilled by the incredible ingenuity it takes to link together the world, just as the comet means nothing to him. The technology either serves his political goals or it does not. It lives under his regulations or it does not.
To the left, skill and ingenuity are just forms of unchecked privilege. The only achievement that matters is power over people. The revolutionary exploits technology, but his revolution is that of the regulator, his machine is collective; its ultimate design is to end ingenuity and abort progress. His communication is not a dialogue, it is a diatribe, and his vision of the internet is only meant to be open until he can close it.