Is John Stuart Mill's On Liberty Obsolete?

In On Liberty, published in 1859, John Stuart Mill argues for the "absolute" protection of the "liberty of thought and discussion." Ever the empiricist, he maintains that such uncompromised freedom, not for all communication or self-expression but for the subset of those activities that qualifies as thought and discussion, would generate the best overall consequences for societies such as Great Britain and the United States. The advent of digital technology has altered how thought and discussion is generated, distributed, and received in ways that might problematize some of the empirical assumptions upon which Mill's argument in On Liberty is based. This essay explores whether the reasons he advances for the absolute liberty of thought and discussion continue to have purchase in the face of the changed empirical domain in which Mill's cherished activities of inquiry and persuasion now operate.