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To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism
The award-winning author of The Net Delusion shows how the radical transparency we've become accustomed to online may threaten the spirit of real-life democracy.
In the very near future, technological systems will allow us to make large-scale and sophisticated interventions into many more areas of public life: politics, culture, public debate, even our definitions of morality and human values. But how will these be affected once we delegate much of the responsibility for them to technology? The temptation of the digital age is to fix everything—from crime to corruption to pollution to obesity—by digitally quantifying, tracking, or gamifiying behavior. But when we change the motivations for our moral, ethical, and civic behavior, we may also change the very nature of that behavior itself. Technology, Evgeny Morozov proposes, can be a force for improvement—but only if we abandon the idea that it is necessarily revolutionary and instead genuinely interrogate what we are doing with it and what it is doing to us.
From urging us to abandon monolithic ideas of “the Internet� to showing how to design more humane and democratic technological solutions, To Save Everything, Click Here is a dazzling tour of our technological future, and a searching investigation into the digital version of an enduring struggle: between man and his machines.
In the very near future, technological systems will allow us to make large-scale and sophisticated interventions into many more areas of public life: politics, culture, public debate, even our definitions of morality and human values. But how will these be affected once we delegate much of the responsibility for them to technology? The temptation of the digital age is to fix everything—from crime to corruption to pollution to obesity—by digitally quantifying, tracking, or gamifiying behavior. But when we change the motivations for our moral, ethical, and civic behavior, we may also change the very nature of that behavior itself. Technology, Evgeny Morozov proposes, can be a force for improvement—but only if we abandon the idea that it is necessarily revolutionary and instead genuinely interrogate what we are doing with it and what it is doing to us.
From urging us to abandon monolithic ideas of “the Internet� to showing how to design more humane and democratic technological solutions, To Save Everything, Click Here is a dazzling tour of our technological future, and a searching investigation into the digital version of an enduring struggle: between man and his machines.
415 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
261 people are currently reading
5,971 people want to read
About the author
Evgeny Morozov
29books304followersEvgeny Morozov is a contributing editor to Foreign Policy and runs the magazine's "Net Effect" blog about the Internet's impact on global politics. Morozov has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University, a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation, a Yahoo! fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, a fellow at George Soros's Open Society Institute, and the Director of New Media at Transitions Online.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 207 reviews
March 11, 2015
Goddamit, Morozov, don't be so disingenuous. I know you FUCKING KNOW that Rosa Parks did not just "happen" to be sitting in the whites-only section of the bus, and her "courageous act" was NOT only "possible because the bus and the sociotechnological system in which [the bus] operated were terribly inefficient." (p. 204)
Don't. Just . . .don't.
Similarly, a woman who turns down cider because of the sugar content does not do so because the fact that "she might derive great sensual pleasure from drinking the cider doesn't naturally occur to her." (p. 255)
Jesus with a chainsaw!
When you elide highly complex sociopolitical issues into oversimplified single-serve textbites you diminish all arguments throughout the book.
Don't. Just . . .don't.
Similarly, a woman who turns down cider because of the sugar content does not do so because the fact that "she might derive great sensual pleasure from drinking the cider doesn't naturally occur to her." (p. 255)
Jesus with a chainsaw!
When you elide highly complex sociopolitical issues into oversimplified single-serve textbites you diminish all arguments throughout the book.
July 10, 2019
Ugh. I picked up this book hoping to read about the folly of technological solutionism - what I got was a snide treatise on the follies of technological solutionists.
The book scarcely goes a page without calling out a particular name in the current app-y noosphere, and essentially reads like the memoir of a grumpy old man telling kids why they're all dumb.
If you follow the cults of personality surrounding individuals in the Silicon Valley elite, this book will trample on your heroes and tell you why they're probably wrong - and does so quite compellingly. If, like me, you aren't in Silicon Valley, nor do you worship Seth Godin, you will find this book completely irrelevant, and inappropriately titled, to boot.
The book scarcely goes a page without calling out a particular name in the current app-y noosphere, and essentially reads like the memoir of a grumpy old man telling kids why they're all dumb.
If you follow the cults of personality surrounding individuals in the Silicon Valley elite, this book will trample on your heroes and tell you why they're probably wrong - and does so quite compellingly. If, like me, you aren't in Silicon Valley, nor do you worship Seth Godin, you will find this book completely irrelevant, and inappropriately titled, to boot.
February 5, 2013
To use a cliche from music reviewers, this book is 'a grower.' It improves as it progresses, and the Postscript is a corker.
The arguments are clear. There is a wide and disturbing gulf between the internet and 'the Internet.' A technological system is being stuff with ideologies, tropes and mantras of progress, revolution and transformation. Actually, it is just the internet. Get over it.
The problems with the first half of the book - and I recognize how this happens - is that Morozov becomes fixated with crushing rather inflated 'internet gurus.' His critique of Clay Shirky - while completely understandable - actually blocked the careful building of his argument. But when this demolition derby of digital divas ended, a powerful argument emerged about the necessity for a 'post-internet'
Read this book. It is a strong contribution to internet studies, media studies, cultural studies and communication studies. Do not let the first few chapters worry you. Stay with the argument. It is a great ride.
The arguments are clear. There is a wide and disturbing gulf between the internet and 'the Internet.' A technological system is being stuff with ideologies, tropes and mantras of progress, revolution and transformation. Actually, it is just the internet. Get over it.
The problems with the first half of the book - and I recognize how this happens - is that Morozov becomes fixated with crushing rather inflated 'internet gurus.' His critique of Clay Shirky - while completely understandable - actually blocked the careful building of his argument. But when this demolition derby of digital divas ended, a powerful argument emerged about the necessity for a 'post-internet'
Read this book. It is a strong contribution to internet studies, media studies, cultural studies and communication studies. Do not let the first few chapters worry you. Stay with the argument. It is a great ride.
March 17, 2015
What if I told you there was no “Internet�?
What if I told you that imperfection is not a bug, but a feature?
It has become so easy to talk about “The Internet� that we don’t stop to think about what we actually mean when we say it. Instead of “the Internet� what we usually mean is a particular technology, program, device, or method. But because we lump these various technologies together we give them greater significance than they individually deserve. This greater, undeserved significance has made us susceptible to the belief that we are living through unique, revolutionary times on account of “The Internet� and our lives, institutions, and values must therefore be modified accordingly. Morozov calls this “Internet-centrism�
Internet-centrism has supplied us “with a set of assumptions about both how the world works and how it should work, about how it talks and how it should talk, recasting many issues an debates in a decidedly internet-centric manner.� Hence, we see what we can do and assume it’s what we should do, or even what we must do. This leads to “solutionism,� the tendency to propose solutions to things that may not, in fact, be problems.
Just because we can predict desires and actions based on algorithms and we can nudge people into certain behaviors through personalized advertizing and gamification doesn’t mean we should. We may lose the ability and the will to think clearly about the moral and philosophical issues involved if we submit ourselves to algorithms, nudges, and game-based behaviorism. And if the attempt to solve the problem of say, poor voter turnout, comes at the expense of the concept of civic duty and responsibility, have we really solved anything or simply created a new problem? If we attempt to solve the problem of political hypocrisy at the expense of political compromise, have we made things better? This is what Morozov means when he argues that imperfection, ambiguity, fallibility, may be features, not bugs. They are part of the cost of being human and being free. Free to fail, forget, and fudge the truth a bit.
But Morozov is no technophobe. He wisely does not choose to argue that technology is the enemy (solutionism and internet-centrism are the enemies), after all, writing is technology. Crop rotation is technology. A compass is technology. Glasses are technology. What he wants is technology that helps � or at least allows us to “uncover the infrastructures that make our techno-binges possible, to transcend the reductionism of numbers, the paternalism of nudges, and the simplicity of gamification, and to engage users as citizens � rather than as consumers who only understand the language of prices and percentage points, or children who can’t be trusted to do the right thing, or Skinnerian rats who can’t do the right thing unless the matching incentive is present.�
The key word here is “engage.� Most modern technology is designed � deliberately, by humans (as opposed to having its own desires and willful trajectories) � to be unobtrusive and to function quietly in the background. There’s nothing inevitable about this. It is possible to design technology that is obtrusive, that requires us to engage it. For example, a lamp that grows dimmer as it is left on and requires constant one to periodically touch it to keep it on and bright. It is annoying? Yes. Does it facilitate awareness of one’s energy usage in a concrete way? Yes. What is the argument that our technology should free us from the ethical consideration of its use? That argument is seldom � if ever � explicitly made; it’s just assumed. Unquestioned. Unchallenged. Even unstated. That seems…lazy.
Morozov directly challenges some of my favorite books and authors: Carr’s The Shallows, Postmans’s Technopoly, but what he offers via his criticism is useful: “If ‘The Internet� is no longer seen as a unified force that acts on our brains or our culture, any account of what digital technologies do to our neurons or books will need to get empirical and start talking about individual technologies and individual practices, perhaps with a not to how such practices evolved and coped in the past.�
This appeal to history, to precedent, is one of the strongest merits of his “post-Internet� approach: “It deflates the shallow and historically illiterate accounts that dominate so much of our technology debate and opens them to much more varied, rich, and historically important experiences. Once we realize that for the last hundred years or so virtually every generation has felt like it was on the edge of a technological revolution…maintaining the myth that our own period is unique and exceptional will hopefully become much harder. Perhaps this will make it all but impossible for solutionists to mobilize revolutionary rhetoric to justify their radical plans to the public.�
I find his approach practical. It’s helpful rather than alarmist; functional rather than depressing. It doesn’t replace Carr and Postman, but it engages them, it clarifies them. In the end, it likely the single most helpful � and most challenging � thing I’ve read to guide the way we think about technology.
What if I told you that imperfection is not a bug, but a feature?
It has become so easy to talk about “The Internet� that we don’t stop to think about what we actually mean when we say it. Instead of “the Internet� what we usually mean is a particular technology, program, device, or method. But because we lump these various technologies together we give them greater significance than they individually deserve. This greater, undeserved significance has made us susceptible to the belief that we are living through unique, revolutionary times on account of “The Internet� and our lives, institutions, and values must therefore be modified accordingly. Morozov calls this “Internet-centrism�
Internet-centrism has supplied us “with a set of assumptions about both how the world works and how it should work, about how it talks and how it should talk, recasting many issues an debates in a decidedly internet-centric manner.� Hence, we see what we can do and assume it’s what we should do, or even what we must do. This leads to “solutionism,� the tendency to propose solutions to things that may not, in fact, be problems.
Just because we can predict desires and actions based on algorithms and we can nudge people into certain behaviors through personalized advertizing and gamification doesn’t mean we should. We may lose the ability and the will to think clearly about the moral and philosophical issues involved if we submit ourselves to algorithms, nudges, and game-based behaviorism. And if the attempt to solve the problem of say, poor voter turnout, comes at the expense of the concept of civic duty and responsibility, have we really solved anything or simply created a new problem? If we attempt to solve the problem of political hypocrisy at the expense of political compromise, have we made things better? This is what Morozov means when he argues that imperfection, ambiguity, fallibility, may be features, not bugs. They are part of the cost of being human and being free. Free to fail, forget, and fudge the truth a bit.
But Morozov is no technophobe. He wisely does not choose to argue that technology is the enemy (solutionism and internet-centrism are the enemies), after all, writing is technology. Crop rotation is technology. A compass is technology. Glasses are technology. What he wants is technology that helps � or at least allows us to “uncover the infrastructures that make our techno-binges possible, to transcend the reductionism of numbers, the paternalism of nudges, and the simplicity of gamification, and to engage users as citizens � rather than as consumers who only understand the language of prices and percentage points, or children who can’t be trusted to do the right thing, or Skinnerian rats who can’t do the right thing unless the matching incentive is present.�
The key word here is “engage.� Most modern technology is designed � deliberately, by humans (as opposed to having its own desires and willful trajectories) � to be unobtrusive and to function quietly in the background. There’s nothing inevitable about this. It is possible to design technology that is obtrusive, that requires us to engage it. For example, a lamp that grows dimmer as it is left on and requires constant one to periodically touch it to keep it on and bright. It is annoying? Yes. Does it facilitate awareness of one’s energy usage in a concrete way? Yes. What is the argument that our technology should free us from the ethical consideration of its use? That argument is seldom � if ever � explicitly made; it’s just assumed. Unquestioned. Unchallenged. Even unstated. That seems…lazy.
Morozov directly challenges some of my favorite books and authors: Carr’s The Shallows, Postmans’s Technopoly, but what he offers via his criticism is useful: “If ‘The Internet� is no longer seen as a unified force that acts on our brains or our culture, any account of what digital technologies do to our neurons or books will need to get empirical and start talking about individual technologies and individual practices, perhaps with a not to how such practices evolved and coped in the past.�
This appeal to history, to precedent, is one of the strongest merits of his “post-Internet� approach: “It deflates the shallow and historically illiterate accounts that dominate so much of our technology debate and opens them to much more varied, rich, and historically important experiences. Once we realize that for the last hundred years or so virtually every generation has felt like it was on the edge of a technological revolution…maintaining the myth that our own period is unique and exceptional will hopefully become much harder. Perhaps this will make it all but impossible for solutionists to mobilize revolutionary rhetoric to justify their radical plans to the public.�
I find his approach practical. It’s helpful rather than alarmist; functional rather than depressing. It doesn’t replace Carr and Postman, but it engages them, it clarifies them. In the end, it likely the single most helpful � and most challenging � thing I’ve read to guide the way we think about technology.
March 29, 2013
Where to begin with this one. In general, I tend to find that with non-fiction writers, regardless the topic and for whatever reason, I tend to agree with the premise but reject the conclusion. Reading back through my reviews, it is not unusual to find this complaint amongst them. My read of Morozov, at least in this book, is a little different; here I tend to agree with Morozov's conclusions while the premise I have trouble buying.
Part of the reason for this is Morozov's rather unusual style of exposition. For example, he never really clearly defines his proposition; instead when he finally comes around to a point, he merely makes the case by instead posing it as a question. And the arguments he does make tend to be built on some really bizarre examples or odd turns of phrase. The number of examples are innumerable, such as his opener where he assures us the results of his peaking into a friends garbage never made it to the echelons of the KGB or his need to reiterate the image of Gordon Bell under his dining room table looking for his car keys. The book is chock full of these weird asides.
Getting into the substance of To Save Everything, Morozov puts up two grand themes of technological progress and, across a series of domains that these themes are targeted, he tries to show how they have deeply negative impacts not just within the specific domain but further out in the broader culture. The two grand themes Morozov is attacking are a mode of action he calls technological solutionism and a conceptual view he calls internet-centrism. In some of the examples he presents these are independent notions but they can also feed off each other.
For sure, Morozov is a nihilist, but he is not a futurist. This is somewhat a good thing because the combination of those two -isms can have disastrous consequences a la Alvin Toffler and other dystopian theorists. Instead, he analyzes the implications of things like self-tracking, open government, gamefication, and all the foibles of our post-modern techno-driven lifestlyes.
None of these issues am I out-right opposed to, even if I am not a participant in most of them, but I am extremely concerned about the issues he raises. Issues such as the processing of big data to draw conclusions across entire groups and populations; or justifying technological hegemony in the name of crime-fighting or other supposed public safety purposes; or the loss of privacy and true freedom through the digitization of social life; etc., etc. But there are clear rational reasons against these issues that he just does not make (such as the problem of correlation-not-causation in the case of big data) instead resorting to all kinds of weird examples of self-tracking which I feel only undercut the argument.
I think the book would have benefited greatly in length and coherency of message if he had just left the entire notion of internet-centrism out (all the more reason because it is a notion he analyzed in his previous book The Net Delusion) because in a way its his weakest argument of the book and only makes the entire thing more complex than it need be. To Morozov, internet-centrism is a perspective that this idea of the internet is a vague and evermore meaningless concept that is invoked to justify all kinds of weak arguments and vacuous proposals. He then systematically presents a host of ideas where it is the case and then tries to break them down. But, the biggest problem is he never gives us a counter-argument to this. He never says, the internet is this and so this is why all these ideas using "the internet" as a support fail. Because, the internet IS a thing, it can be defined rather easily (see Andrew Blum's Tubes), and a true understanding of what the internet is and can do rather simply puts a lot of the epochalism to rest.
At the end of the day, I feel that Morozov raises some truly thought-provoking questions on technological progress and for that reason it justifies the read, but you may find yourself struggling with the idiosyncrasies of the presentation. Part of the issue, in my opinion (and Morozov does suggest as such even in the postscript), is his cultural background which is informed by that bastion of nihilism and authoritarianism in Europe, Belarus; but that can only be part of the issue. Whatever the reason, we can only hope that the message is not lost within this opaque book, because it seems that as the millennial generation matures, this perspective is slowly being crowded out of the conversation. But, after it is all said and done, the last way to tell this is a worthy read is from that most far-fetched of metrics: the book blurb. Because when the President of Estonia writes a book blurb in the positive for you AND its basically a paragraph long, you know you did something right.
Part of the reason for this is Morozov's rather unusual style of exposition. For example, he never really clearly defines his proposition; instead when he finally comes around to a point, he merely makes the case by instead posing it as a question. And the arguments he does make tend to be built on some really bizarre examples or odd turns of phrase. The number of examples are innumerable, such as his opener where he assures us the results of his peaking into a friends garbage never made it to the echelons of the KGB or his need to reiterate the image of Gordon Bell under his dining room table looking for his car keys. The book is chock full of these weird asides.
Getting into the substance of To Save Everything, Morozov puts up two grand themes of technological progress and, across a series of domains that these themes are targeted, he tries to show how they have deeply negative impacts not just within the specific domain but further out in the broader culture. The two grand themes Morozov is attacking are a mode of action he calls technological solutionism and a conceptual view he calls internet-centrism. In some of the examples he presents these are independent notions but they can also feed off each other.
For sure, Morozov is a nihilist, but he is not a futurist. This is somewhat a good thing because the combination of those two -isms can have disastrous consequences a la Alvin Toffler and other dystopian theorists. Instead, he analyzes the implications of things like self-tracking, open government, gamefication, and all the foibles of our post-modern techno-driven lifestlyes.
None of these issues am I out-right opposed to, even if I am not a participant in most of them, but I am extremely concerned about the issues he raises. Issues such as the processing of big data to draw conclusions across entire groups and populations; or justifying technological hegemony in the name of crime-fighting or other supposed public safety purposes; or the loss of privacy and true freedom through the digitization of social life; etc., etc. But there are clear rational reasons against these issues that he just does not make (such as the problem of correlation-not-causation in the case of big data) instead resorting to all kinds of weird examples of self-tracking which I feel only undercut the argument.
I think the book would have benefited greatly in length and coherency of message if he had just left the entire notion of internet-centrism out (all the more reason because it is a notion he analyzed in his previous book The Net Delusion) because in a way its his weakest argument of the book and only makes the entire thing more complex than it need be. To Morozov, internet-centrism is a perspective that this idea of the internet is a vague and evermore meaningless concept that is invoked to justify all kinds of weak arguments and vacuous proposals. He then systematically presents a host of ideas where it is the case and then tries to break them down. But, the biggest problem is he never gives us a counter-argument to this. He never says, the internet is this and so this is why all these ideas using "the internet" as a support fail. Because, the internet IS a thing, it can be defined rather easily (see Andrew Blum's Tubes), and a true understanding of what the internet is and can do rather simply puts a lot of the epochalism to rest.
At the end of the day, I feel that Morozov raises some truly thought-provoking questions on technological progress and for that reason it justifies the read, but you may find yourself struggling with the idiosyncrasies of the presentation. Part of the issue, in my opinion (and Morozov does suggest as such even in the postscript), is his cultural background which is informed by that bastion of nihilism and authoritarianism in Europe, Belarus; but that can only be part of the issue. Whatever the reason, we can only hope that the message is not lost within this opaque book, because it seems that as the millennial generation matures, this perspective is slowly being crowded out of the conversation. But, after it is all said and done, the last way to tell this is a worthy read is from that most far-fetched of metrics: the book blurb. Because when the President of Estonia writes a book blurb in the positive for you AND its basically a paragraph long, you know you did something right.
March 8, 2013
A fantastic and original read. Morozov is an unconventional and broad thinker. His latest book bounces from philosophy to technnology to history to sociology without any awkwardness or forced moves. He does the reader a great service by pulling back the curtain on the unintended and unseen consequences of our growing reliance on 'solutions' thinking.
Here is a challenge to the talking points of Silicon Valley that is never shrill nor bombastic.
Morozov provokes, challenges and, above all, he breaks the spell of the presumed inevitability of our current technological society.
Here is a challenge to the talking points of Silicon Valley that is never shrill nor bombastic.
Morozov provokes, challenges and, above all, he breaks the spell of the presumed inevitability of our current technological society.
Read
February 25, 2014Reading Evgeny Morozov's writing is like watching a man lob gasoline-soaked tennis balls at the system, at the lie-machine produced by West Coast techies (some of whom I once worked for) and legions of wooden-headed "intellectuals" whose level of ethical sophistication stopped developing somewhere shy of the 9th grade. I watch the lie-machine burn, and I cackle, and I can feel the flames' reflection glinting off my irises.
But then I get tired, and I get what I call Dissent-ery, which is the intensely fucked over, helpless feeling I get after reading articles in Dissent. But I've still got some fire in my eyes.
Now, granted, Morozov's argument is more of a polemic than an argument, and it's not as rigorous as it could be. I can point out some areas for improvement. But I know that in five years, fully coherent versions of these ideas will be around, and Morozov may be the man spreading him-- for Christ's sake, he's only two years older than me, and what the fuck am I doing with my life.
But then I get tired, and I get what I call Dissent-ery, which is the intensely fucked over, helpless feeling I get after reading articles in Dissent. But I've still got some fire in my eyes.
Now, granted, Morozov's argument is more of a polemic than an argument, and it's not as rigorous as it could be. I can point out some areas for improvement. But I know that in five years, fully coherent versions of these ideas will be around, and Morozov may be the man spreading him-- for Christ's sake, he's only two years older than me, and what the fuck am I doing with my life.
March 12, 2014
This book, the author's second, picks a fight with the greed and self-adulation in Silicon Valley culture that would justify any technological advance as an unmitigated good and gift to humanity.
To identify his target, Morozov coins the term "solutionism" as the rampant trend of proponents of internet technology to identify things in society they find undesirable as problems to be fixed, by placing efficiency above all else, and putting aside the harder questions that the consequences of technology raise.
He disdains the use of the "The Internet," claiming it has become a debased and meaningless banner for the promotion of questionable products whose value is nothing more than a ticket in the IPO lottery for startups.
First, in the interest of full disclosure, I must say that by profession as a data scientist, I am guilty in Morozov eyes, of promoting the benefits of analysis of big data that he sees as part of the problem. I spend efforts analyzing personal data, much of it the massive newly emerging streams generated by individual's cars, especially my own, being one of the so-called "quantified selves" that he derides, and I'm one source of the technology and the inspiration that drives the excesses he takes to task in this book. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
A recent rising star, Morozov is well known for his columns and blog posts (he contributes regularly to Slate.com) with his critical view of ideas coming out of Silicon Valley. His reach is encyclopedic, and only a token of it can be touched upon in this review. This book could well spawn several books to respond to his critique, which would be a desirable and useful discussion to see. Initially he sounds like yet another techno-phobe, by highlighting the unintended effects and social inequities overlooked by the more enthusiastic cheerleaders for the latest high-tech product. Indicative of his approach, among the numerous cases he goes after is a recent startup, Impermium.com, that promises to remove offensive and unacceptable content posted on a company's websites. As he fears, restriction of the web to exclusively anodyne content could well eliminate important opinions, and his might well be an early causality.
Clearly the endless stream of claims made by start-ups offers vast opportunities for poking fun.
But of all the careful thinkers in the field, one would think he'd be the last to be taken in by hype that accompanies startups pitching their businesses. But demolishing such overdone sales claims makes for some entertaining laughs, if less than enlightening reading. Borrowing from his Russian background, his hyperbolic style savages his opponents by suggestive juxtapositions that place them in as bad a light as possible.
If you can stand the rhetoric you realize that his book is not an anti-technology diatribe per se (and I can take some relief in not being the direct target of his wrath), but is about the claims made of its world-transforming, inevitable power. His argument is with the purveyors of the technology, who justify their claims with the ill-defined cyber-whig future of "The Internet." And please do read the authors he takes to task for yourself if, instead of his acerbic critique, you want a fair view of what they truly think: He takes arms against a veritable catalog of internet researchers; Larry Lessig, Kevin Kelly, Jonathan Zittrain, along with Eric Schmidt, Ester Dyson, Stephen Wolfram, Ray Kurzweil, Jeff Bezos, any of the admirers of Steve Jobs, and any speaker who's distilled their opinions to fit within the 18 minute duration of a TED talk.
Characteristically he credits Lessig with claiming that the internet is "like a force of nature" (p. 67) when Lessig deserves to be credited with identifying the utter mailability of the internet. In actuallity Lessig's argument in his book "Code" is just the opposite, and agreeable with Morozov's sentiments, rather than with the technological determinism that Morozov pins on him. [2]
While the mud gets slung back and forth by Morozov and his self-envisioned micreants of Silicon Valley, perhaps I can keep my head down and get some valuable work done, in threshing the wheat from the chaff among the uses of the vast amount of data, along with its currency and the computing power of clusters of machines to process it. For insight into what technology in the internet trenches is that fans the flames of this debate I recommend Nate Silver's insightful and readible "Signal and the Noise" [1], a book about forecasting and how it has been transformed by technology. Not to get too much off topic of this review, the point of the book is the challenge of getting through the randomness of most data. Not appreciated in the public debate is how much the technology depends on what the statistical analysis can and cannot recover, and how much the analysis deals solely with anonomous statistical analysis, only at the very initial and final steps having actual names attached to it.
I suggest starting this book with the postscript and working your way backwards, since the most thoughtful discussion occupies the end of each chapter, once the author has burnt himself out entertaining us with clever putdowns across the entire technological spectrum.
A considerate reading, though, reveals a sensitive view of the complexities of technology's social, political and moral aspects that technology proponents and like-minded commentators run roughshod over, in their unquestioning enthusiasm for the supposed beneficence of Internet solutionism.. He details cases why technical innovation ignorant of the social norms it imposes can unwittingly hinder social progress, by enforcing entrenched undesirable social practices. To illustrate, such might be the case with statistical social network tracking or face recognition algorithms that unknowingly duplicate racial profiling.
Morozov's has to dig deep to find good examples of the moral quandries that current applications of technology blithely ignore. An outstanding example is the new turnstiles in the New York City Subway that physically prevent entry without valid payment, unlike the honor system characteristic of many European public transit systems, such as Berlin's. The moral choice a system like Berlin's allows is valuable, and arguably necessary in fringe circumstances when entry---for instance for rescue, or refuge---would be better left to a question of judgment rather than a mechanical device.
The oversimplification by enforcing choices based on just maximizing efficiency removes the moral need for deliberation, and reduces choice. If the good is supposedly built into the technology, does that make us possibly less morally aware, much as reliance on ubiquitous' GPS on our smartphones dulls our innate sense of direction? Not every intricate facet of our social lives is a problem to be overcome by replacement with the use of a novel application conceived with hard-wired values of right and wrong.
This book is worth a read for its revealing exploration of how idolatry in any simplistic notion of good versus bad goes wrong ---in this case---uncritical pursuit of the numerous technical opportunities offered by the current fad in "Internet" innovations, which as they mature are oblivious to the serious role they now play in the future of society.
[1] Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail � but Some Don't, Penguin Press HC, (2012).
[2] Lawrence Lessig, Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace, Basic Books (2000).
2 September 2013 (c) John Mark Agosta
To identify his target, Morozov coins the term "solutionism" as the rampant trend of proponents of internet technology to identify things in society they find undesirable as problems to be fixed, by placing efficiency above all else, and putting aside the harder questions that the consequences of technology raise.
He disdains the use of the "The Internet," claiming it has become a debased and meaningless banner for the promotion of questionable products whose value is nothing more than a ticket in the IPO lottery for startups.
First, in the interest of full disclosure, I must say that by profession as a data scientist, I am guilty in Morozov eyes, of promoting the benefits of analysis of big data that he sees as part of the problem. I spend efforts analyzing personal data, much of it the massive newly emerging streams generated by individual's cars, especially my own, being one of the so-called "quantified selves" that he derides, and I'm one source of the technology and the inspiration that drives the excesses he takes to task in this book. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
A recent rising star, Morozov is well known for his columns and blog posts (he contributes regularly to Slate.com) with his critical view of ideas coming out of Silicon Valley. His reach is encyclopedic, and only a token of it can be touched upon in this review. This book could well spawn several books to respond to his critique, which would be a desirable and useful discussion to see. Initially he sounds like yet another techno-phobe, by highlighting the unintended effects and social inequities overlooked by the more enthusiastic cheerleaders for the latest high-tech product. Indicative of his approach, among the numerous cases he goes after is a recent startup, Impermium.com, that promises to remove offensive and unacceptable content posted on a company's websites. As he fears, restriction of the web to exclusively anodyne content could well eliminate important opinions, and his might well be an early causality.
Clearly the endless stream of claims made by start-ups offers vast opportunities for poking fun.
But of all the careful thinkers in the field, one would think he'd be the last to be taken in by hype that accompanies startups pitching their businesses. But demolishing such overdone sales claims makes for some entertaining laughs, if less than enlightening reading. Borrowing from his Russian background, his hyperbolic style savages his opponents by suggestive juxtapositions that place them in as bad a light as possible.
If you can stand the rhetoric you realize that his book is not an anti-technology diatribe per se (and I can take some relief in not being the direct target of his wrath), but is about the claims made of its world-transforming, inevitable power. His argument is with the purveyors of the technology, who justify their claims with the ill-defined cyber-whig future of "The Internet." And please do read the authors he takes to task for yourself if, instead of his acerbic critique, you want a fair view of what they truly think: He takes arms against a veritable catalog of internet researchers; Larry Lessig, Kevin Kelly, Jonathan Zittrain, along with Eric Schmidt, Ester Dyson, Stephen Wolfram, Ray Kurzweil, Jeff Bezos, any of the admirers of Steve Jobs, and any speaker who's distilled their opinions to fit within the 18 minute duration of a TED talk.
Characteristically he credits Lessig with claiming that the internet is "like a force of nature" (p. 67) when Lessig deserves to be credited with identifying the utter mailability of the internet. In actuallity Lessig's argument in his book "Code" is just the opposite, and agreeable with Morozov's sentiments, rather than with the technological determinism that Morozov pins on him. [2]
While the mud gets slung back and forth by Morozov and his self-envisioned micreants of Silicon Valley, perhaps I can keep my head down and get some valuable work done, in threshing the wheat from the chaff among the uses of the vast amount of data, along with its currency and the computing power of clusters of machines to process it. For insight into what technology in the internet trenches is that fans the flames of this debate I recommend Nate Silver's insightful and readible "Signal and the Noise" [1], a book about forecasting and how it has been transformed by technology. Not to get too much off topic of this review, the point of the book is the challenge of getting through the randomness of most data. Not appreciated in the public debate is how much the technology depends on what the statistical analysis can and cannot recover, and how much the analysis deals solely with anonomous statistical analysis, only at the very initial and final steps having actual names attached to it.
I suggest starting this book with the postscript and working your way backwards, since the most thoughtful discussion occupies the end of each chapter, once the author has burnt himself out entertaining us with clever putdowns across the entire technological spectrum.
A considerate reading, though, reveals a sensitive view of the complexities of technology's social, political and moral aspects that technology proponents and like-minded commentators run roughshod over, in their unquestioning enthusiasm for the supposed beneficence of Internet solutionism.. He details cases why technical innovation ignorant of the social norms it imposes can unwittingly hinder social progress, by enforcing entrenched undesirable social practices. To illustrate, such might be the case with statistical social network tracking or face recognition algorithms that unknowingly duplicate racial profiling.
Morozov's has to dig deep to find good examples of the moral quandries that current applications of technology blithely ignore. An outstanding example is the new turnstiles in the New York City Subway that physically prevent entry without valid payment, unlike the honor system characteristic of many European public transit systems, such as Berlin's. The moral choice a system like Berlin's allows is valuable, and arguably necessary in fringe circumstances when entry---for instance for rescue, or refuge---would be better left to a question of judgment rather than a mechanical device.
The oversimplification by enforcing choices based on just maximizing efficiency removes the moral need for deliberation, and reduces choice. If the good is supposedly built into the technology, does that make us possibly less morally aware, much as reliance on ubiquitous' GPS on our smartphones dulls our innate sense of direction? Not every intricate facet of our social lives is a problem to be overcome by replacement with the use of a novel application conceived with hard-wired values of right and wrong.
This book is worth a read for its revealing exploration of how idolatry in any simplistic notion of good versus bad goes wrong ---in this case---uncritical pursuit of the numerous technical opportunities offered by the current fad in "Internet" innovations, which as they mature are oblivious to the serious role they now play in the future of society.
[1] Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail � but Some Don't, Penguin Press HC, (2012).
[2] Lawrence Lessig, Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace, Basic Books (2000).
2 September 2013 (c) John Mark Agosta
April 13, 2013
According to Evgeny Morozov, the world has gone crazy and he's one of the few sane people left. Zynga and Facebook, he writes, in his strange new book, "To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism," have "become models to think about civic engagement." Yelp and Amazon have "become models to think about criticism." People who believe the open Internet can be a tool for good and who worry about and try to oppose people who are using it to hurt others, actually treat the Internet like a "religion" and believe "it's the ultimate technology and the ultimate network." Like the proverbial engineer with a hammer, they see all of society's quirks, inefficiencies, waste, inequality, corruption and hypocrisy as nails to be smashed with smart tools and big data.
If it were up to their ilk, he writes, "The odds are that a perfectly efficient seat-distribution system--abetted by ubiquitous technology, sensors, and facial recognition--would have robbed us of one of the proudest moments in American history." That is, "technosolutionists," the villains of Morozov's book, would have engineered such a perfect bus-seating system balancing the seating claims of white and black riders that Rosa Parks could never have committed her history-making act of civil disobedience. Yes, he imagines that, without a word about the underlying problem of racism. I am not making this up.
And it gets worse....my full review is here:
If it were up to their ilk, he writes, "The odds are that a perfectly efficient seat-distribution system--abetted by ubiquitous technology, sensors, and facial recognition--would have robbed us of one of the proudest moments in American history." That is, "technosolutionists," the villains of Morozov's book, would have engineered such a perfect bus-seating system balancing the seating claims of white and black riders that Rosa Parks could never have committed her history-making act of civil disobedience. Yes, he imagines that, without a word about the underlying problem of racism. I am not making this up.
And it gets worse....my full review is here:
April 8, 2013
A bit over-meticulous with the examples at times, but the depth of the approach excuses it. Morozov is known for his eviscerations of net celebs, but the strength of this book is in its deep roots, not its acid -- He pulls from everything from mid-20th century conservatism to classic liberalism to the post-structuralism of Bruno Latour. Morozov at his best not only unpacks the implications of Silicon Valley "solutionism", but aligns that unpacking with a broad intellectual tradition that Morozov has reconfigured in a novel and useful way.
There are those that will see this book as just another half-inch deep stab in the endless Jarvis-Lanier-Carr-Tapscott-Bauerlein wars. That would be both a shame and a good example of the problem we face when talking about technology, a problem that Morozov's work (unlike so many others) attempts to address in a systematic way. I am not sure I agree with even half of what Morozov argues at the level of detail -- but I am happy to have the discussion on the terms he sets out, and ultimately that is his great accomplishment.
There are those that will see this book as just another half-inch deep stab in the endless Jarvis-Lanier-Carr-Tapscott-Bauerlein wars. That would be both a shame and a good example of the problem we face when talking about technology, a problem that Morozov's work (unlike so many others) attempts to address in a systematic way. I am not sure I agree with even half of what Morozov argues at the level of detail -- but I am happy to have the discussion on the terms he sets out, and ultimately that is his great accomplishment.
June 29, 2013
The premise of this book would have made for a fantastic article but was stretched way too thin over several hundred pages. I see great value in arguing against solutionism and internet-centrism but, in order to fill the pages, the author is forced to repeat himself ad nauseum and level a series of attacks against other authors that do little to further his argument. If you are thinking of picking this up just read the first few sections and you will have a solid understanding of the rest of the book.
March 4, 2017
Mind - Blowing: Een visie die compleet breekt met het standaard Silicon Valley 'technologie-utopianisme', wat verfrissend is, maar vooral noodzakelijk.
March 26, 2013
To Save Everything Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism thankfully evades the formulaic trap of the “how-to� subtitle and smartly presents a series of cogent arguments refuting internet exceptionalism:
This argument—that “the Internet� is just another technology and that the current epochalism of “everything is different now� is just another turn of the technological wheel—is the precursor to the true heart of To Save Everything. What is discussed after the reader accepts that premise brings fresh concepts and novel suggestions into a seemingly immutable space:
To Save Everything has a problem; it is trying to singlehandedly reframe the argument against an entire cultural movement. In fact, it’s saying that there is no culture behind the internet movement; simply technological structures taken as gospel and overlaid upon society. Morozov isn’t the reactionary, he’s the heretic—the innovator. Creative destruction, the rallying cry of the internet vanguard is applicable to everything in society—except the internet. It’s exactly that exceptionalism that To Save Everything brings front and center.
Recasting all complex social situations either as neatly defined problems with definite, computable solutions or as transparent and self-evident processes that can be easily optimized—if only the right algorithms are in place!—this quest is likely to have unexpected consequences that could eventually cause more damage than the problems they seek to address.To Save Everything unabashedly excerpts and refutes the current zeitgeist; NPR called the author “contrarian,� which while technically accurate, denotes a tenor of warrantless spite that isn’t present in the text:
In his best-selling book The Shallows, Carr worries that “the Internet� is making his brain demand �to be fed the way the Net fed it—and the more is fed, the hungrier it became.� He complains that �the Net...provides a high-speed system for delivering responses and rewards...which encourage the repetition of both physical and mental actions.� The book is full of similar complaints. For Carr, the brain is 100 percent plastic, but “the Internet� is 100 percent fixed.This isn’t the manifesto of a crank or a Luddite but a careful refutation of the internet as a something beyond technology. �How did we reach a point where “the Internet� is presumed to develop according to laws as firm and natural as those of gravity?� When most people still alive today have lived without ubiquitous connectivity, To Save Everything is agog at how quickly it can be forgotten—or ignored—that the network of networks is manufactured, not immutable:
The naive idea that data exists “in nature� and can simply be gathered or discovered without our having to account for our data-gathering tools, the knowledge systems that underpin them, and multiple layers of human interpretation is one of the defining features of information reductionism. For data to gathered, someone first needs to decide—or defer to someone else’s judgment about—what is being measured, in what manner, with what devices, and to what purpose.Forgiving acceptance of constantly altering privacy policies, search engine algorithms, and GPS tracking just because “that’s the way the internet is� is absolutely stunning. To Save Everything points out, again and again, that there is nothing inherent about the structure of the internet—just because it is decentralized in form doesn’t mean that its current function is required, or even beneficial:
To argue that �instead of reducing information and hiding what does not make it through, filters now increase information and reveal the whole deep sea� is not just to give Silicon Valley a free pass on morality but also to give in to one of the core beliefs of Internet-centrism—the idea that just because these new filters originate on “the Internet,� they must somehow be divine, free from the biases of their creators, and completely immune to the power context in which they are designed and deployed.The internet has taken on the role of the sacred, with Silicon Valley as both conduit and deity: in a post-theist world, the sacraments of unalterable creationism have been vested in “the Internet.� And woe unto thee that questions the holy triumvirate of transparency, immediacy, and personalization, for thou shalt be branded a heretic:
The preservation of “the Internet� seems to have become an end in itself, to the great detriment of our ability even to imagine what might come to supplant it and how our Internet fetish might be blocking that something from emerging. To choose “the Internet� over the starkly uncertain future of the post-Internet world is to tacitly acknowledge that either “the Internet� has satisfied all our secret plans, longings, and desires—that is, it is indeed Silicon Valley’s own “end of history� —or that we simply can’t imagine what else innovation could unleash.Drawing a distinction between the internet and “the Internet� is a conceptual shift that is increasingly difficult and proportionately valuable; even those that stay offline are assaulted with book subtitles about the value of applying internet lessons to “real world� practices. �How our digital technologies unfold in the future will be a factor not of how “the Internet� works or how computers work but of how we choose to make them work.� In reminding the reader that there is no inherent unique goodness in patterning all life—the internet included—after the current structural form of the internet, there are occasional missteps:
Now that the numbers are out there, a politician’s less-than-sterling attendance record is likely to feature in negative ads from his or her contenders in the next election. However, as Hibbling and Theiss-Morse point out, �the difference between a 100 percent attendance record and a 95 percent attendance record is invariably a smattering of inconsequential quorum calls.� All of a sudden, politicians can no longer make decisions about how to balance their obligations, and politics as a whole suffers as a result. Thus, write Stealth Democracy’s authors, �members would be doing something much more beneficial to the greater good by remaining in their offices or committee rooms, meeting with constituents, studying, or discussing issues with fellow committee members. But the pressures of publicity force them to dash off to vote on every non-issue, no matter how foregone the conclusion.�As an illustration of one of the many good intentions paving the road to hell, it’s a good example of a new way of thinking about unintended consequences; functionally, however, it shifts the blame of responsible time management from politicians to the ignorant, romantic public. It removes the agency of a politician and positions the public as reactionary, ready to remove someone from office because their opponents said they weren’t sitting at their desk during roll call. It obliterates the inconvenient possibility that a 95 percent attendance rate may mean that the 5 percent missed were key votes that were avoided for political, financial, or special interest reasons. That type of “informationless data� is exactly what Morozov rails against and weakens the argument when vilified when others use it but trotted out if it supports your assertion. If a politician is concerned with their attendance record solely so it can’t be used against them, maybe that is the exact type of information the public needs to know. Of course, does that now mean that a 100 percent attendance records are a signifier of a shallow politician that doesn’t engage in substantive work and is only concerned about electability and appearance? Should people vote out those with flawless records so politicians more capable of skipping quorum-calls to do “real� work can be installed? That is an absurd extension, of the argument, but it is a simple affair to make data-points say whatever you want. Context-free data—not too much data—is the problem, so the hypothetical political opposition’s assertions that the missed 5 percent is a negative is no more or less valid than Hibbling and Theiss-Morse’s contention that it is �invariably a smattering of inconsequential quorum calls.� That it is not "invariably" anything is the problem with this quote; in its haste to produce a counter-argument to the virtues governmental transparency, To Save Everything leans too heavily into a broad abstraction. Politicians �would”—rather than �could”—use their time more wisely than spending it at “inconsequential� meetings. This is more a criticism of Stealth Democracy than To Save Everything—but in non-fiction, you are what you quote.
This argument—that “the Internet� is just another technology and that the current epochalism of “everything is different now� is just another turn of the technological wheel—is the precursor to the true heart of To Save Everything. What is discussed after the reader accepts that premise brings fresh concepts and novel suggestions into a seemingly immutable space:
As more people embrace this track-and-share mentality, those who refuse to participate in this great party will bear the brunt of the social costs. This is why we need a debate about the ethics of self-tracking; a decision to track and publicize a certain aspect of our daily lives cannot arise solely from our preoccupation with improving our own well-being—just as a decision about how much electricity or water to consume in our households cannot arise solely from our ability to pay for them or our material needs.For all the talk and internet-centric musing on the benefits to global interpersonal connection, “the Internet� increasingly disregards the community—the network!—in service of a severed “self� that each user presents to the world:
The recent appeal of self-tracking can only be understood when viewed against the modern narcissistic quest for uniqueness and exceptionalism. Self-tracking—especially when done in public—is often just a by-product of attempts to show off and secure one’s uniqueness in a world where suddenly everyone has a voice and is expected to say things that matter. In addition to all the practical benefits—both real and imaginary—self-tracking offers, it also allows adherents to identify—and cement by means of sharing—the most unique aspects of their individuality. Thus, the logic goes, if you’re not unique, you are simply not measuring enough indicators.This severed-self is the marketing cog that drives the ad-supported machinery of the current internet model; if you're an anonymous blip in a vast interwoven tapestry of humankind, targeted ads cannot find you. To Save Everythingshatters the illusions standing between the ubiquitous “sharing� of false, drop-box interconnectivity and the isolated cocoon of individualization that current internet formatting forces users into:
When the first generation of bloggers got online in the late 1990s, the only intermediaries between them and the rest of the world were their hosting companies and Internet service providers. People starting a blog in 2012 are likely to end up on a commercial platform like Tumblr or WordPress, with all their blog comments running through a third-party company like Disqus. But the intermediaries don’t just stop there: Disqus itself cooperates with a company called Impermium, which relies on various machine learning tools to check whether comments posted are spam. It’s the proliferation—not elimination—of intermediaries that has made blogging so widespread. The right term here is “hyperintermediation,� not “disintermediation.�Again and again, readers are reminded that there is nothing inherent in the way online systems are constructed. Again and again, readers are reminded that they are handing the keys of how society is shaped to technologists, rational-choice economists, and internet-centric cyber-utopians—not democratically elected officials but business-and-marketing-driven online mavens:
Despite what Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg believes, we do not bring our stable, authentic self to technologies we use, only to recover it in the same mint condition ten years later. Technologies actively shape our notion of the self; they even define how and what we think about it. They shape the contours of what we believe to be negotiable and nonnegotiable; they define the structure and tempo of our self-experimentationFantastic business people with stunning credentials and top MBAs might not be whom society should let decide whether a unified online persona is beneficial, particularly when their company’s bottom line is predicated upon it seeming natural and inevitable. It is hard to know which psychologists, philosophers, neuroscientists helped Facebook create its theory of self, or whether it is simply an anecdotal extension of its sweatshirt-for-all-occasions ubertechnologist founder’s beliefs.
To Save Everything has a problem; it is trying to singlehandedly reframe the argument against an entire cultural movement. In fact, it’s saying that there is no culture behind the internet movement; simply technological structures taken as gospel and overlaid upon society. Morozov isn’t the reactionary, he’s the heretic—the innovator. Creative destruction, the rallying cry of the internet vanguard is applicable to everything in society—except the internet. It’s exactly that exceptionalism that To Save Everything brings front and center.
Above all, [political] parties help create conditions in which partisanship can flourish—and whatever centrist pundits like to believe, partisanship has many beneficial uses as well. It entrenches pluralism as the only game in town, forcing the ruling party to acknowledge that its own “truth� may be just one way to tell the story.The current form of the internet, Morozov reminds us, is just one way to tell the story. And he seems to be the only one willing to do so.
September 30, 2017
Sağlıktan iklim değişimine her şeyin çözümü internette arayan, "şu sağlık sorunları için bir app çıksa da çözülse" diyen ve her türlü teknolojik gelişmeyi insanlığa bir armağan olarak gören Silikon Vadici kültüre (ki bunlara "solutionist" diyor) laflar hazırlamış.
Problem çözme işini Silikon Vadisi'ne devredicez diye regüle edilmesi gereken bir alanı boşlamayalım. Misal obezite sorununu sadece kişisel monitoring projelerine ve app'lere bırakmak regüle etmekle uğraşacağımız bir alanı boş bırakıyor.
App dünyası, geri dönüşümden egzersize veya ışıkları ne zaman kapatıp açtığınıza kadar her alanda sizin hakkınızda yeterince bilgiye ulaşıp nasıl davranmanız gerektiğine dair çözüm oluşturmaya çalışıyor. Tamam. Şu anda Google'ın duman dedektörlerinden aldığı veya buzdolabı kapağının açıp kapama zamanınızın verisinini umursamıyor olabilirsiniz ancak bunların politik sonuçlarını düşünmek için bir zaman yaratalım.
Ben, alın benim datamı, verin bana daha iyi tedavimi, verin indirim kuponlarınımıcıyım. Zaten bizi bedenden kurtaramadınız. Hala bu paralar neden kanserin tedavisine gitmiyorcular var. O yüzden yansın bu dünya nolacaksa olsuncuyum.
Problem çözme işini Silikon Vadisi'ne devredicez diye regüle edilmesi gereken bir alanı boşlamayalım. Misal obezite sorununu sadece kişisel monitoring projelerine ve app'lere bırakmak regüle etmekle uğraşacağımız bir alanı boş bırakıyor.
App dünyası, geri dönüşümden egzersize veya ışıkları ne zaman kapatıp açtığınıza kadar her alanda sizin hakkınızda yeterince bilgiye ulaşıp nasıl davranmanız gerektiğine dair çözüm oluşturmaya çalışıyor. Tamam. Şu anda Google'ın duman dedektörlerinden aldığı veya buzdolabı kapağının açıp kapama zamanınızın verisinini umursamıyor olabilirsiniz ancak bunların politik sonuçlarını düşünmek için bir zaman yaratalım.
Ben, alın benim datamı, verin bana daha iyi tedavimi, verin indirim kuponlarınımıcıyım. Zaten bizi bedenden kurtaramadınız. Hala bu paralar neden kanserin tedavisine gitmiyorcular var. O yüzden yansın bu dünya nolacaksa olsuncuyum.
November 10, 2015
The Internet will help us save everything.
If you frowned upon or scoffed at the above statement, and you love sarcasm and word play, then this book is for you. "Galton's iPhone" and "So Open It Hurts".. come on. Morozov addresses and unpacks our techno-utopian and solutionist view of the Internet, but in a more approachable, conversational manner. Take that with a pinch of salt though, because he comes off as someone who is irked by everything anyone else says about the Internet. So not so much conversation... but more like a conference speech. And at times, he honestly does come off like he is picking a personal bone with certain people.
It is however, still an important book! Perhaps not in itself, as it is quite skewed.. but in the grand scheme of things in media studies as it does reel in the overwhelmingly enthusiastic discourse surrounding the Internet's "ability" to solve our problems.
If you frowned upon or scoffed at the above statement, and you love sarcasm and word play, then this book is for you. "Galton's iPhone" and "So Open It Hurts".. come on. Morozov addresses and unpacks our techno-utopian and solutionist view of the Internet, but in a more approachable, conversational manner. Take that with a pinch of salt though, because he comes off as someone who is irked by everything anyone else says about the Internet. So not so much conversation... but more like a conference speech. And at times, he honestly does come off like he is picking a personal bone with certain people.
It is however, still an important book! Perhaps not in itself, as it is quite skewed.. but in the grand scheme of things in media studies as it does reel in the overwhelmingly enthusiastic discourse surrounding the Internet's "ability" to solve our problems.
May 6, 2013
Fascinating read on the dangers of oversimplification of human behavior and moral/societal problems via quantification and the emergence of Big Data. Every technopreneur should read this book and decide if he or she wants to just make another "fun" App, hoping to create enough hype to make money or be acquired by an Advertising Supported tech giant (Facebook, Yelp, etc)or actually change the world for the better by creating technologies that make us reflect and think about bigger moral and ethical questions of our behaviors instead of just optimizing our individualistic and materialistic lives...
January 13, 2016
I came across this little short story from guernica magazine while I was writing this review and I must recommend it as it conveys much more thought, expression, nuance, reason than I could write in this review.
At the very outset, let me articulate what this book is not. This book is not a page turner. This book will take your time and if you cannot keep up with the heavy dose of interdisciplinary research that Morozov so painstakingly has put up, then you may have to re-read specific parts again. When I am reading a book and find something unknown, I fold corner of the page and after completing the book, I note down all the references from those pages. Usually for a non fiction, it doesn't go above 20 or 25. Here, it went to 88.
Silicon valley and its cheerleaders have a prism. Let's call it, prism of solution. Behemoths of the valley take their turn to look through the prism and at times come up with solutions. You may ask, solutions of what? Global poverty? Middle east conflict? Abysmal literacy in SE Asia? Hunger in sub-saharan Africa? Well, not exactly solutions of those problems, However it is argued that if the solutions from the proponents of the valley are rigorously followed, then humanity would do better and the problems listed above may get resolved as well. However there is a trick. The silicon valley humanitarian organizations must be allowed no-holds-barred access to the world whose problems it has set out to conquer. Some sovereign rights of the citizens of the world may have to bid goodbye in the process. But if the end result is rosy, some thorns can be tolerated. Or so the argument goes.
Wrong.
There are no solutions. As Morozov argues, there is solution-ism but not solutions. There is urge to find solutions to problems that very well, may not even exist. Take Mark Zuckerberg, who had said that animosities in Middle East do not "come from a deep hatred of anyone" but "from the lack of connectedness and lack of communication, lack of empathy and understanding". Apparently Facebook and Google Hangout and Skype and whatsapp are in a position to bring world peace. What remains unasked and obviously unanswered is that if communications are key to world peace, then why did telephone, television and before that radios, telegrams and before that railway lines failed to address it? Because all problems cannot be solved by technology. As Morozov brings text from Science historian David Edgerton's book 'The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900', much of recent history of technology is dominated by accounts that prioritize invention and innovation rather than use of those of those. Due to recency bias and multitude of other factors, current prevalent account of technology and its healing press reports gain mainstream currency and we forget that most innovations have no consequences - snapchat and pinterest may be innovative but do they provide any solution that their private equity investors and founders claim - and those that do end up having consequence, requires frequent repairing. COBOL isn't obsolete because node.js is here. COBOL serves its purpose dutifully and still in use by NASA.
Or take the urge to fix politics. With cheap computing power and ubiquity of Internet, armchair thinkers of politics invoke quotes of politicians and then apply it to suit their narrative, at the guise of being neutral and intellectual. Often the context in which the politician had said what she had said, get lost and only the citation floats. And when someone with fifty thousand twitter follower tweets something like that, it becomes 'topic of today's fight'. When twitter and facebook and blogs become journalism outlets, then we can only assume that democratic debates have somehow lost their place. The problem with the said platforms are not lack of debates - because debates they are, in their fury - but lack of nuanced debates. After all, a politician comes from a political party and often parties are bound to ingress and egress within a fixed ideological periphery and when a politician tweets or blogs, the information is unidirectional. There is no one to provide a counter argument to the politician's assertion and even if there is, they don't elicit any response from the politician. Contrast that with a press meeting, where journalists affiliated with all hues of political spectrum ask questions. It is no surprise that India's current prime minister has not given any interview to any press person, because he gets his share of publicity with curated tweets. Compare a fact checking website and an opinion article by some veteran policy scholar. Internet peddles this scholar-layman issue in a colorful battle of elite and common people. Be whatever it may, a factchecker website gives whether the claim of a politician or party has been fulfilled and if so, to what extent. But it doesn't give the context in which that claim was made and in the context in which the fulfillment has been done.
Now there are applications and websites that monitor every word a politician says. Apparently they promise transparency and champion issues of accountability and hypocrisy. But again as Morozov shows, with heavy doses from numerous political scientists, philosophers, legal theorists, too much transparency, an unfettered access to all words of a politician, and claims to root out hypocrisy from politics can backfire. As the French philosopher Bruno Latour had said, "what we despise as political mediocrity is simply the collection of compromises that we force politicians to make on our behalf." Catherine Needham in her book 'Citizen Consumers' cautioned that, "The fundamental danger is that consumerism may foster privatized and resentful citizens whose expectations of government can never be met, and cannot develop the concern for the public good that must be the foundation of democratic engagement and support for public services". It is for these reasons that governments, contrary to what solutionists believe, cannot be modeled as a startup. Politics never was a consumer market, it was and hopefully will remain, a bastion of ambivalence. No citizen can have it all, there has to be a common middle ground. Solutionist politics removes that common ground, where citizens, even activist citizens can find green pasture. Neither should politics be rid of deceptions, they have been there since the time of Greek and Egyptian empires. If politics and political economy were so easy to plot in a data visualization software, then we would have seen more geeks entering politics and not making claims of political revolution, without even entering the field.
Similarly Morozov busts the myth of Internet centrism. In accounts of Jeff Jarvis, regulation X could be a problem of silicon valley, and a problem of silicon valley is a problem of America and therefore regulation X is a problem of America. This smooth theory of associativity doesn't explain or want to explain why something bad for technology companies is bad for American citizenry. This type of accounts which enjoy enormous popularity in online punditry, don't explain history, backgrounds of a regulation, implications and ramifications of that regulation 15 years down the line. It has the gratifying feeling of instant cappuccino. It sure serves as a refresher course of what is happening in the cyber world of today, but it is a very bad education material for generations to come.
Often Internet is fielded as the great leveler of human civilization, the great democratic force that broke all physical barriers and intruded every home, from Bosnia to Bolivia, from Peru to Pyongyang. The assertion goes like this, Internet is open, everyone can access it, anyone who wishes can make his/her website and since it doesn't limit anyone on doing these things, it is democratic. It doesn't say that most of the Internet is junk, 12% of websites are pornographic sites, a huge chunk is click-bait sites. It doesn't say that when we search something in Google, it's algorithm creates a personalized surrounding for you. Internet does not give unrestricted access, you are anyway limited within filter bubble - for knowing about filter bubble, visit - and the more data search engines and technology companies gain, the more personalized treatment you get.
Commodification of data, read private information, has yielded areas of manipulation and concern. In a democratic society, people expect accountability and response from government, in response to queries. Internet companies are hardly the model of accountability. Morozov gives a very interesting point when Google decided to stop ad-sense program to the high-brow literary magazine website guernica.com, where Google not only acted as a true non-democratic leader but also as a unresponsive website. Google algorithm detected that one piece of guernica contained profanity and since ad-sense doesn't allow profanity, it blocked the revenue from ad-sense. When guernica explained the literary freedom and aesthetics to Google, the search giant decided to turn a deaf ear. Facebook never forgets to remind us of the significance of being connected, but Facebook tracks someone who doesn't even have a facebook account. And there lies the paradox, in the world of consumerism, data is a commodity to the highest bidder. As trend of online image management grows, sites like will only increase in number. Concerns over privacy and ethics of sharing - which don't feature in Zuckerberg's tyrannical myth of sharing and connecting - will then be completely disregarded.
As at the later parts of the book, Morozov shows that technophobia is also equally bad as techno-utopianism. Technology has benefited humans long before Silicon valley commercialized and equated words like 'innovation' and 'better'. There are definite use cases where we must apply technology. However before thinking of technological solutions, we must restrain from thinking that technology is a hammer and the problem at hand is nail. Not all technologies are suitable for everyone. Online courses of udemy and coursera will not help children from Somalia and before crying over lack of Internet infrastructure and broadband penetration, we must carefully consider the structural issues of the problem. We also have to take care of ethical and moral perspectives of technology. We are already living in a world where not having a facebook profile is considered suspicious. We have to take into account the amount of space - personal and social - we give to technology companies and allow them to shape our world. Contrary to popular rhetoric that technology just follows the norms of society, technology alters the norms and it does so in a manner of disjointed dots, where the final result is cast in future. It is time to take that future into our own hands and not let technology and technology companies decide that future for us. Morozov is an ideal student of Descartes who had said, 'I think, therefore I am.' Morozov wants us to reframe the technological debate in it's right context and warns us that unless we give due deliberation to the factors of technological change, we will give technology to shape our conscience. Like Montaigne had said, "The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom.". And technology and technology companies are riding on an utopian horse to shape, reshape and mould that conscience.
At the very outset, let me articulate what this book is not. This book is not a page turner. This book will take your time and if you cannot keep up with the heavy dose of interdisciplinary research that Morozov so painstakingly has put up, then you may have to re-read specific parts again. When I am reading a book and find something unknown, I fold corner of the page and after completing the book, I note down all the references from those pages. Usually for a non fiction, it doesn't go above 20 or 25. Here, it went to 88.
Silicon valley and its cheerleaders have a prism. Let's call it, prism of solution. Behemoths of the valley take their turn to look through the prism and at times come up with solutions. You may ask, solutions of what? Global poverty? Middle east conflict? Abysmal literacy in SE Asia? Hunger in sub-saharan Africa? Well, not exactly solutions of those problems, However it is argued that if the solutions from the proponents of the valley are rigorously followed, then humanity would do better and the problems listed above may get resolved as well. However there is a trick. The silicon valley humanitarian organizations must be allowed no-holds-barred access to the world whose problems it has set out to conquer. Some sovereign rights of the citizens of the world may have to bid goodbye in the process. But if the end result is rosy, some thorns can be tolerated. Or so the argument goes.
Wrong.
There are no solutions. As Morozov argues, there is solution-ism but not solutions. There is urge to find solutions to problems that very well, may not even exist. Take Mark Zuckerberg, who had said that animosities in Middle East do not "come from a deep hatred of anyone" but "from the lack of connectedness and lack of communication, lack of empathy and understanding". Apparently Facebook and Google Hangout and Skype and whatsapp are in a position to bring world peace. What remains unasked and obviously unanswered is that if communications are key to world peace, then why did telephone, television and before that radios, telegrams and before that railway lines failed to address it? Because all problems cannot be solved by technology. As Morozov brings text from Science historian David Edgerton's book 'The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900', much of recent history of technology is dominated by accounts that prioritize invention and innovation rather than use of those of those. Due to recency bias and multitude of other factors, current prevalent account of technology and its healing press reports gain mainstream currency and we forget that most innovations have no consequences - snapchat and pinterest may be innovative but do they provide any solution that their private equity investors and founders claim - and those that do end up having consequence, requires frequent repairing. COBOL isn't obsolete because node.js is here. COBOL serves its purpose dutifully and still in use by NASA.
Or take the urge to fix politics. With cheap computing power and ubiquity of Internet, armchair thinkers of politics invoke quotes of politicians and then apply it to suit their narrative, at the guise of being neutral and intellectual. Often the context in which the politician had said what she had said, get lost and only the citation floats. And when someone with fifty thousand twitter follower tweets something like that, it becomes 'topic of today's fight'. When twitter and facebook and blogs become journalism outlets, then we can only assume that democratic debates have somehow lost their place. The problem with the said platforms are not lack of debates - because debates they are, in their fury - but lack of nuanced debates. After all, a politician comes from a political party and often parties are bound to ingress and egress within a fixed ideological periphery and when a politician tweets or blogs, the information is unidirectional. There is no one to provide a counter argument to the politician's assertion and even if there is, they don't elicit any response from the politician. Contrast that with a press meeting, where journalists affiliated with all hues of political spectrum ask questions. It is no surprise that India's current prime minister has not given any interview to any press person, because he gets his share of publicity with curated tweets. Compare a fact checking website and an opinion article by some veteran policy scholar. Internet peddles this scholar-layman issue in a colorful battle of elite and common people. Be whatever it may, a factchecker website gives whether the claim of a politician or party has been fulfilled and if so, to what extent. But it doesn't give the context in which that claim was made and in the context in which the fulfillment has been done.
Now there are applications and websites that monitor every word a politician says. Apparently they promise transparency and champion issues of accountability and hypocrisy. But again as Morozov shows, with heavy doses from numerous political scientists, philosophers, legal theorists, too much transparency, an unfettered access to all words of a politician, and claims to root out hypocrisy from politics can backfire. As the French philosopher Bruno Latour had said, "what we despise as political mediocrity is simply the collection of compromises that we force politicians to make on our behalf." Catherine Needham in her book 'Citizen Consumers' cautioned that, "The fundamental danger is that consumerism may foster privatized and resentful citizens whose expectations of government can never be met, and cannot develop the concern for the public good that must be the foundation of democratic engagement and support for public services". It is for these reasons that governments, contrary to what solutionists believe, cannot be modeled as a startup. Politics never was a consumer market, it was and hopefully will remain, a bastion of ambivalence. No citizen can have it all, there has to be a common middle ground. Solutionist politics removes that common ground, where citizens, even activist citizens can find green pasture. Neither should politics be rid of deceptions, they have been there since the time of Greek and Egyptian empires. If politics and political economy were so easy to plot in a data visualization software, then we would have seen more geeks entering politics and not making claims of political revolution, without even entering the field.
Similarly Morozov busts the myth of Internet centrism. In accounts of Jeff Jarvis, regulation X could be a problem of silicon valley, and a problem of silicon valley is a problem of America and therefore regulation X is a problem of America. This smooth theory of associativity doesn't explain or want to explain why something bad for technology companies is bad for American citizenry. This type of accounts which enjoy enormous popularity in online punditry, don't explain history, backgrounds of a regulation, implications and ramifications of that regulation 15 years down the line. It has the gratifying feeling of instant cappuccino. It sure serves as a refresher course of what is happening in the cyber world of today, but it is a very bad education material for generations to come.
Often Internet is fielded as the great leveler of human civilization, the great democratic force that broke all physical barriers and intruded every home, from Bosnia to Bolivia, from Peru to Pyongyang. The assertion goes like this, Internet is open, everyone can access it, anyone who wishes can make his/her website and since it doesn't limit anyone on doing these things, it is democratic. It doesn't say that most of the Internet is junk, 12% of websites are pornographic sites, a huge chunk is click-bait sites. It doesn't say that when we search something in Google, it's algorithm creates a personalized surrounding for you. Internet does not give unrestricted access, you are anyway limited within filter bubble - for knowing about filter bubble, visit - and the more data search engines and technology companies gain, the more personalized treatment you get.
Commodification of data, read private information, has yielded areas of manipulation and concern. In a democratic society, people expect accountability and response from government, in response to queries. Internet companies are hardly the model of accountability. Morozov gives a very interesting point when Google decided to stop ad-sense program to the high-brow literary magazine website guernica.com, where Google not only acted as a true non-democratic leader but also as a unresponsive website. Google algorithm detected that one piece of guernica contained profanity and since ad-sense doesn't allow profanity, it blocked the revenue from ad-sense. When guernica explained the literary freedom and aesthetics to Google, the search giant decided to turn a deaf ear. Facebook never forgets to remind us of the significance of being connected, but Facebook tracks someone who doesn't even have a facebook account. And there lies the paradox, in the world of consumerism, data is a commodity to the highest bidder. As trend of online image management grows, sites like will only increase in number. Concerns over privacy and ethics of sharing - which don't feature in Zuckerberg's tyrannical myth of sharing and connecting - will then be completely disregarded.
As at the later parts of the book, Morozov shows that technophobia is also equally bad as techno-utopianism. Technology has benefited humans long before Silicon valley commercialized and equated words like 'innovation' and 'better'. There are definite use cases where we must apply technology. However before thinking of technological solutions, we must restrain from thinking that technology is a hammer and the problem at hand is nail. Not all technologies are suitable for everyone. Online courses of udemy and coursera will not help children from Somalia and before crying over lack of Internet infrastructure and broadband penetration, we must carefully consider the structural issues of the problem. We also have to take care of ethical and moral perspectives of technology. We are already living in a world where not having a facebook profile is considered suspicious. We have to take into account the amount of space - personal and social - we give to technology companies and allow them to shape our world. Contrary to popular rhetoric that technology just follows the norms of society, technology alters the norms and it does so in a manner of disjointed dots, where the final result is cast in future. It is time to take that future into our own hands and not let technology and technology companies decide that future for us. Morozov is an ideal student of Descartes who had said, 'I think, therefore I am.' Morozov wants us to reframe the technological debate in it's right context and warns us that unless we give due deliberation to the factors of technological change, we will give technology to shape our conscience. Like Montaigne had said, "The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom.". And technology and technology companies are riding on an utopian horse to shape, reshape and mould that conscience.
March 16, 2021
Despite the fact it was published in 2013 (and there are companies mentioned that most people would've forgotten about by now -- Zynga, Zagat, and Gawker), there is still a lot in this book that can be useful for thinking about what's going on today. In fact, whole chunks of it work nicely to reflect on issues that we've already seen today (the first example that comes to mind are "fact-checking" institutions and how many people are often oblivious to the problems behind the scene, believing them to be "non-partisan" or "ideologically moderate"). More than a few times I was like "Oh, this is actually something we're seeing now."
And I'm kind of sure that's not a good thing, especially in a world where we're throwing 'advanced technology' at problems instead of trying to understand the problem. (I mean, if we were to throw any other technology at a problem, acting as if it's a panacea, people would rightfully question whether we were trying to actually do anything useful at all. "Oh, there's a lot of crime? Let's give the criminals some markers!")
There are a few issues that I take with this book. First, there's a factual error so common among white historians that it's infuriating to see someone so analytical making it: the presumption that Rosa Parks "didn't know" where she was sitting would become a "whites only" area of the bus. The fact that what she did was intentional is completely omitted in lieu of making an analogy about how her "breaking the law" (which helps change culture, it continues) would've never been possible if technology existed that could separate Black and white people without further human intervention in buses at the time. The argument could've still functioned (and probably been stronger) had he actually acknowledged that Rosa Parks' actions were an intentional act of political defiance.
Second, there are a lot of are of areas where it's assumed that we should maintain systems of governance that we have and reform them because it's the best we've got. Politically, I kind of disengaged with arguments because there were areas where he'd take shots at the wrong areas (like making generalisations around decentralisation -- there are a lot of good cases for decentralising certain aspects of our lives, and this goes out the window because he's focusing on the contradictory beliefs of right-libertarian techbros).
And the same is true of the discussion around political parties. There is no engaging with what we're actually seeing in many places and how some political parties really aren't all that different from others. Much like the people that Morozov writes about who are ignoring the problems to simply fix them with technology, he's also ignoring the underlying political and social issues of the things he 'defends'. It does make me curious where he'd fall today as a result of the atrocious pandemic response, which doesn't seem to matter which party is in power in many European or North American nations (which are the focus in this book).
Overall, not a horrible book. Some interesting ideas. Some areas needed more fleshing out (the 3 different 2-page education sections most definitely were lacking a lot of information and analysis, which I thought would've been more abundant).
And I'm kind of sure that's not a good thing, especially in a world where we're throwing 'advanced technology' at problems instead of trying to understand the problem. (I mean, if we were to throw any other technology at a problem, acting as if it's a panacea, people would rightfully question whether we were trying to actually do anything useful at all. "Oh, there's a lot of crime? Let's give the criminals some markers!")
There are a few issues that I take with this book. First, there's a factual error so common among white historians that it's infuriating to see someone so analytical making it: the presumption that Rosa Parks "didn't know" where she was sitting would become a "whites only" area of the bus. The fact that what she did was intentional is completely omitted in lieu of making an analogy about how her "breaking the law" (which helps change culture, it continues) would've never been possible if technology existed that could separate Black and white people without further human intervention in buses at the time. The argument could've still functioned (and probably been stronger) had he actually acknowledged that Rosa Parks' actions were an intentional act of political defiance.
Second, there are a lot of are of areas where it's assumed that we should maintain systems of governance that we have and reform them because it's the best we've got. Politically, I kind of disengaged with arguments because there were areas where he'd take shots at the wrong areas (like making generalisations around decentralisation -- there are a lot of good cases for decentralising certain aspects of our lives, and this goes out the window because he's focusing on the contradictory beliefs of right-libertarian techbros).
And the same is true of the discussion around political parties. There is no engaging with what we're actually seeing in many places and how some political parties really aren't all that different from others. Much like the people that Morozov writes about who are ignoring the problems to simply fix them with technology, he's also ignoring the underlying political and social issues of the things he 'defends'. It does make me curious where he'd fall today as a result of the atrocious pandemic response, which doesn't seem to matter which party is in power in many European or North American nations (which are the focus in this book).
Overall, not a horrible book. Some interesting ideas. Some areas needed more fleshing out (the 3 different 2-page education sections most definitely were lacking a lot of information and analysis, which I thought would've been more abundant).
March 5, 2019
My February read was “To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism� by my compatriot Evgeny Morozov. What I find surprising is that this well-known self-appointed Silicon Valley heretic is practically unknown in his native Belarus. I remember dropping his name as a candidate to invite to some local academic event, and my interlocutors went “Who?� To contrast that, I remember getting a link to one of his books from my American instructor. Among many of his achievements, he was named one of 28 most influential Europeans by Politico in 2018. Indeed, his name has crossed my sight quite a few times, just not in the context of Belarus. I find it strange, since I can hardly think of any Belarusian in intellectual space, maybe apart from Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich whose influence had such a significant reach in our current global context.
I’ve heard of Morozov when his Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom hit the shelves in 2011. Morozov poured cold water on hopes many of us, including myself, shared that the power of Internet would help defeat authoritarian regimes by spreading unhampered information to the masses. Conceivably the argument he made in that book was prophetic, since it is 2019 and we are still nowhere near a world without dictatorships. Worse, Internet has helped orchestrate Brexit and Trump’s rise to power. Freedom House reports that the state of democracy is actually getting worse. Morozov accurately pointed out some of the dark sides of the global web and was one of few voices at that time to speak out against cyber-utopianism.
Two years after Net Delusion, a follow-up, “To Save Everything, Click Here� was published. This one keeps on along the same lines but the scope is wider. Morozov debunks what he calls “technological solutionism.� What is that?
One, solutionism presumes rather than investigates the problems that it is trying to solve, reaching “for the answer before the questions have been fully asked.� How problems are composed matters every bit as much as how problems are resolved, here Morozov quotes design theorist Michael Dobbins.
Second, some “problems� in need of solving are not problems at all; a deeper investigation into the very nature of these “problems� would reveal that the inefficiency, ambiguity, and opacity—whether in politics or everyday life—that the newly empowered geeks and solutionists are rallying against are not in any sense problematic. Quite the opposite: these vices are often virtues in disguise. That, thanks to innovative technologies, the modern-day solutionist has an easy way to eliminate them does not make them any less virtuous.
Now equip solutionism with technology and you get the idea of what he counters. Well, in 2018, this stance doesn’t strike me as some sibylline foresight, it’s now almost trendy to criticize Kurweil-style techno-optimism. Harari went as far as dubbing it a techno-religion. But then tech solutionism is now pretty much modus vivendi in our ever-growing startup ecosystems. How else can you raise funds to realize your idea unless you come up with a solution to this or that problem? A lot of these ideas fail, very few survive. And it’s OK with many venture capitalists as long as few (maybe even one or two) turn into something big and profitable. That’s the nature of the game.
The problem arises when some solutions are actually applied. Morozov offers a number of examples, for instance biases in predictive policing algorithms, privacy issues, and fallacies in gamification approaches. But what is interesting is that he also concludes that subjectivity, inefficiency, and ignorance have been playing a crucial role in our culture and public life as a whole. “The Internet,� he writes, cannot be a solution to those “deficiencies� because these are not deficiencies at all; rather, they are important but fragile accomplishments that we ought to defend.
Given the above, it is unperplexing utilitarianism, in Morozov’s lexis, comes up almost as a swear word. For instance, Amazon-led “meme industry,� whose goal is “to produce the maximum number of books and have the maximum number of people read them,� is referred to by Morozov as “some kind of perverse utilitarianism for the literati.� Later he recalls utilitarianism again in his criticism of self-help and self-tracking.
As philosophical counterweights to the likes of Francis Galton and Herbert Spencer, hardly the most prominent utilitarians who would come to mind, some philosophers like Bernard Williams and Nietzsche are mentioned. Nietzsche comes up as a critic of “information reductionism� and “the quantification fetish,� while Williams is brought in to bolster the argument against unnecessary self-tracking. It’s kind of sad that utilitarianism is never really explored in this book, just superficially brought up here and there without any real insight.
Morozov is concerned that new technologies can impede on “the command of our own ship,� that we may be played and led to do things we otherwise wouldn’t do. Yes, a number of intellectuals voice similar concerns these days. He’s right to point out that technologies actively shape our notion of the self; they even define how and what we think about it. Ironically, it is thanks to the Internet, meditation apps, and ebooks I came to realize that the self Morozov so frequently talks about was an illusion. The power of Internet is immense to shape our notion of self, here I concur. But so is everything else. Before Internet, there was television, newspapers and radio, there was an educational system, parents, neighborhood, teachers, etc. He writes about “the meme industry� but fails to note that memes spread throughout human history. New technologies are just a step up in empowering people to share them.
This book, just as his previous one, made me question my own assumptions. However, I cannot say I fully agree with his position. The problem with solutions is similar to that with explanations. Some explanations are wrong. We always need to look for good explanations of reality. Some problems, say, global warming, cancer, senescence diseases, require all the attention the brightest minds of our species can spare. We need better explanations how these conditions occur in order to find working solutions to these problems. Morozov does not oppose attempts to solve real problems, of course, but it is probably the first couple of decades so many people around the world started actively exploring ways how to solve them. And this phenomenon can only be explained by the previously unimaginable availability of knowledge, which is courtesy of some of this book’s “villains.�
Each coin has two sides. Tech is just a tool in our hands. It depends on us what we make of it. Maybe we need to stop perpetuating the false dichotomy between IT field and the humanities. Such technology critics as Morozov are important voices even when you disagree with some of their claims and beliefs. #books #bookreviews
I’ve heard of Morozov when his Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom hit the shelves in 2011. Morozov poured cold water on hopes many of us, including myself, shared that the power of Internet would help defeat authoritarian regimes by spreading unhampered information to the masses. Conceivably the argument he made in that book was prophetic, since it is 2019 and we are still nowhere near a world without dictatorships. Worse, Internet has helped orchestrate Brexit and Trump’s rise to power. Freedom House reports that the state of democracy is actually getting worse. Morozov accurately pointed out some of the dark sides of the global web and was one of few voices at that time to speak out against cyber-utopianism.
Two years after Net Delusion, a follow-up, “To Save Everything, Click Here� was published. This one keeps on along the same lines but the scope is wider. Morozov debunks what he calls “technological solutionism.� What is that?
One, solutionism presumes rather than investigates the problems that it is trying to solve, reaching “for the answer before the questions have been fully asked.� How problems are composed matters every bit as much as how problems are resolved, here Morozov quotes design theorist Michael Dobbins.
Second, some “problems� in need of solving are not problems at all; a deeper investigation into the very nature of these “problems� would reveal that the inefficiency, ambiguity, and opacity—whether in politics or everyday life—that the newly empowered geeks and solutionists are rallying against are not in any sense problematic. Quite the opposite: these vices are often virtues in disguise. That, thanks to innovative technologies, the modern-day solutionist has an easy way to eliminate them does not make them any less virtuous.
Now equip solutionism with technology and you get the idea of what he counters. Well, in 2018, this stance doesn’t strike me as some sibylline foresight, it’s now almost trendy to criticize Kurweil-style techno-optimism. Harari went as far as dubbing it a techno-religion. But then tech solutionism is now pretty much modus vivendi in our ever-growing startup ecosystems. How else can you raise funds to realize your idea unless you come up with a solution to this or that problem? A lot of these ideas fail, very few survive. And it’s OK with many venture capitalists as long as few (maybe even one or two) turn into something big and profitable. That’s the nature of the game.
The problem arises when some solutions are actually applied. Morozov offers a number of examples, for instance biases in predictive policing algorithms, privacy issues, and fallacies in gamification approaches. But what is interesting is that he also concludes that subjectivity, inefficiency, and ignorance have been playing a crucial role in our culture and public life as a whole. “The Internet,� he writes, cannot be a solution to those “deficiencies� because these are not deficiencies at all; rather, they are important but fragile accomplishments that we ought to defend.
Given the above, it is unperplexing utilitarianism, in Morozov’s lexis, comes up almost as a swear word. For instance, Amazon-led “meme industry,� whose goal is “to produce the maximum number of books and have the maximum number of people read them,� is referred to by Morozov as “some kind of perverse utilitarianism for the literati.� Later he recalls utilitarianism again in his criticism of self-help and self-tracking.
As philosophical counterweights to the likes of Francis Galton and Herbert Spencer, hardly the most prominent utilitarians who would come to mind, some philosophers like Bernard Williams and Nietzsche are mentioned. Nietzsche comes up as a critic of “information reductionism� and “the quantification fetish,� while Williams is brought in to bolster the argument against unnecessary self-tracking. It’s kind of sad that utilitarianism is never really explored in this book, just superficially brought up here and there without any real insight.
Morozov is concerned that new technologies can impede on “the command of our own ship,� that we may be played and led to do things we otherwise wouldn’t do. Yes, a number of intellectuals voice similar concerns these days. He’s right to point out that technologies actively shape our notion of the self; they even define how and what we think about it. Ironically, it is thanks to the Internet, meditation apps, and ebooks I came to realize that the self Morozov so frequently talks about was an illusion. The power of Internet is immense to shape our notion of self, here I concur. But so is everything else. Before Internet, there was television, newspapers and radio, there was an educational system, parents, neighborhood, teachers, etc. He writes about “the meme industry� but fails to note that memes spread throughout human history. New technologies are just a step up in empowering people to share them.
This book, just as his previous one, made me question my own assumptions. However, I cannot say I fully agree with his position. The problem with solutions is similar to that with explanations. Some explanations are wrong. We always need to look for good explanations of reality. Some problems, say, global warming, cancer, senescence diseases, require all the attention the brightest minds of our species can spare. We need better explanations how these conditions occur in order to find working solutions to these problems. Morozov does not oppose attempts to solve real problems, of course, but it is probably the first couple of decades so many people around the world started actively exploring ways how to solve them. And this phenomenon can only be explained by the previously unimaginable availability of knowledge, which is courtesy of some of this book’s “villains.�
Each coin has two sides. Tech is just a tool in our hands. It depends on us what we make of it. Maybe we need to stop perpetuating the false dichotomy between IT field and the humanities. Such technology critics as Morozov are important voices even when you disagree with some of their claims and beliefs. #books #bookreviews
September 16, 2020
Evgeny Morozov challenges the people who put "the internet" and digital technology on the pedestal. The "internet-centrists", as Morozov called them, are often busy selling "solutionism", which sees the world as a collection of bugs that can only be solved through technological means.
At the heart of the book is Morozov's argument that solutionism is a form of reductionism and that the bugs in our society are actually features. By committing to solutionism, the internet-centrists are simplifying the world and seeing it through a narrow perspective. Therefore, the solutions proposed do not necessarily solve the problems, but just presenting the illusion of progress and improvement and could be even detrimental as it takes resources away from meaningful reform.
What is interesting is the challenge towards our view of automation and efficiency. In a chapter dedicated to law enforcement and digital policing, Morozov mentions that while it might be true that preemptive policing can prevent crime before it happens, the view of law enforcement and morality in society will be drastically changed. Can someone be good when there is no alternative? Can you be morally conscious if your action has been made easy, nudged, or even automated, and not as a result of deliberate choice?
By the end of the book, Morozov calls for the rethinking of our relations with digital technology. Calling this a post-internet approach, we need to scrutinize each innovation separately, and not blinded by the promises of progress and solutions. What's more important than solution is our ability to question and confront the status quo, problem or no problem, bug or feature, in order to be one step closer to meaningful reform.
At the heart of the book is Morozov's argument that solutionism is a form of reductionism and that the bugs in our society are actually features. By committing to solutionism, the internet-centrists are simplifying the world and seeing it through a narrow perspective. Therefore, the solutions proposed do not necessarily solve the problems, but just presenting the illusion of progress and improvement and could be even detrimental as it takes resources away from meaningful reform.
What is interesting is the challenge towards our view of automation and efficiency. In a chapter dedicated to law enforcement and digital policing, Morozov mentions that while it might be true that preemptive policing can prevent crime before it happens, the view of law enforcement and morality in society will be drastically changed. Can someone be good when there is no alternative? Can you be morally conscious if your action has been made easy, nudged, or even automated, and not as a result of deliberate choice?
By the end of the book, Morozov calls for the rethinking of our relations with digital technology. Calling this a post-internet approach, we need to scrutinize each innovation separately, and not blinded by the promises of progress and solutions. What's more important than solution is our ability to question and confront the status quo, problem or no problem, bug or feature, in order to be one step closer to meaningful reform.
November 17, 2024
A well-researched book, if a bit of a slog to read. Thoughtful and of most use when talking about the inherent value of deliberation and railing against technocracy. Also a useful explosion of the myth of the sui generis nature of the internet compared to other communications innovations, drawing reference to the shoddy scholarship of Elizabeth Eisenstein on “print culture�
August 5, 2018
3.5
Easy to read, full of little tidbits, started to drag mid way, overall decent.
Easy to read, full of little tidbits, started to drag mid way, overall decent.
December 24, 2020
Morozov nous propose de trouver d'autres solutions au monde que la technologie. On revoit l'image de Folamour qui trépigne d'appuyer sur son gros bouton rouge, et on sourit.
Want to read
September 18, 2023Interesting take on the quantified self and self-tracking: "The quantified self is simply “Taylorism within�, writes the tech critic Evgeny Morozov, and another example of the “modern narcissistic quest for uniqueness and exceptionalism�. - taken from the article "Made to measure: why we can’t stop quantifying our lives".
To read when finishing:
To read when finishing:
March 10, 2017
A superb, brilliantly-written, and important critique of "solutionism" and internet-centrism. The notion that maximizing efficiency in every situation is desirable � something that is taken for granted in our culture where "disruption" is celebrated and "friction" is a bad word � comes under sustained attack here.
The ubiquity of smartphones and the explosion of apps has made it easier than ever for people to record and quantify every aspect of their life. I suppose, as a person who writes reviews of every book he reads for this app, I'm guilty of this. But Morozov points out that our rush to optimize every aspect of our life prevents us from questioning the premises embedded in our culture.
Morozov's withering critiques of individuals might rub some the wrong way, but I found them necessary and persuasive. This is a great book.
The ubiquity of smartphones and the explosion of apps has made it easier than ever for people to record and quantify every aspect of their life. I suppose, as a person who writes reviews of every book he reads for this app, I'm guilty of this. But Morozov points out that our rush to optimize every aspect of our life prevents us from questioning the premises embedded in our culture.
Morozov's withering critiques of individuals might rub some the wrong way, but I found them necessary and persuasive. This is a great book.
August 26, 2013
To anyone beyond a certain age, it is a regular event to be scolded by those younger than oneself as being technologically ignorant or worse still resistant to change. My children occasionally do this to me and who knows what is said out of earshot. After my son suggested I was a Luddite for questioning that MOOCs (huge online classes) will come to dominate the educational world, I asked him to look up what a "Luddite" to see if he really meant the charge.
But I digress.... My interest in Morozov's book was kindled by my dislike of the shallow thinking lies behind many technological arguments, especially it seems those that focus on the Internet. Technological determinist arguments have been around for a long time. At the same time, business books as a genre have developed so that it is hard to find a well publicized volume that is not also a thoroughly practiced sale pitch. So when I heard about a book that provided some detailed and thoughtful responses to a range of arguments tied to the internet, I was intrigued.
The book focused on two modal problems that are shared by a many internet arguments. The first is a tendency to mystify the "internet" into one imposing thing that will be difficult to change, will reshape our society, and will end up helping us solve most of our problems. In reality, the internet is a complex of things and programs that is quite complex in its operation and quite capable of being examined in terms of its parts.
The second model problem that ties the book's chapters together is a critique of "solutionism", which is a modern version of the argument that technology will solve our problems so that all we need to do is find the right machine, software, app, etc. It is related to arguments in which
hammers are roaming around looking for nails, albeit digital ones.
The book proceeds through a series of chapters organized around a different set of problems. The author argues consistently and fairly persuasively for the need to view technology as a tool, the need to exercise critical thinking, the need to think ethically and take personal responsibility, and the possibility that the data don't speak for themselves. Unintended consequences arguments are also made to the effect that should we turn the world over to machines and their operators, we might not fully appreciate the results.
The problem with a book like this is that one constantly fears that the author is cherry picking his targets so that the contrary side of the argument is shortchanged. That may be going on here but it is not excessive, given what I know of these arguments. It is also possible to start seeing the author as overly grumpy and critical, although I did not find that the case. There is much to criticize in the high tech hype world and the more practice that we get at thinking about these matters rather than responding to cheerleaders, the better off we will be.
The chapters are a bit long and drag in sections. Some of the topical threads are more interesting to follow than others. Overall, it was an enjoyable to the general paucity of critical thinking that is displayed in business trade books.
But I digress.... My interest in Morozov's book was kindled by my dislike of the shallow thinking lies behind many technological arguments, especially it seems those that focus on the Internet. Technological determinist arguments have been around for a long time. At the same time, business books as a genre have developed so that it is hard to find a well publicized volume that is not also a thoroughly practiced sale pitch. So when I heard about a book that provided some detailed and thoughtful responses to a range of arguments tied to the internet, I was intrigued.
The book focused on two modal problems that are shared by a many internet arguments. The first is a tendency to mystify the "internet" into one imposing thing that will be difficult to change, will reshape our society, and will end up helping us solve most of our problems. In reality, the internet is a complex of things and programs that is quite complex in its operation and quite capable of being examined in terms of its parts.
The second model problem that ties the book's chapters together is a critique of "solutionism", which is a modern version of the argument that technology will solve our problems so that all we need to do is find the right machine, software, app, etc. It is related to arguments in which
hammers are roaming around looking for nails, albeit digital ones.
The book proceeds through a series of chapters organized around a different set of problems. The author argues consistently and fairly persuasively for the need to view technology as a tool, the need to exercise critical thinking, the need to think ethically and take personal responsibility, and the possibility that the data don't speak for themselves. Unintended consequences arguments are also made to the effect that should we turn the world over to machines and their operators, we might not fully appreciate the results.
The problem with a book like this is that one constantly fears that the author is cherry picking his targets so that the contrary side of the argument is shortchanged. That may be going on here but it is not excessive, given what I know of these arguments. It is also possible to start seeing the author as overly grumpy and critical, although I did not find that the case. There is much to criticize in the high tech hype world and the more practice that we get at thinking about these matters rather than responding to cheerleaders, the better off we will be.
The chapters are a bit long and drag in sections. Some of the topical threads are more interesting to follow than others. Overall, it was an enjoyable to the general paucity of critical thinking that is displayed in business trade books.
March 19, 2014
This fascinating, of-the-moment book is jam-packed with thoughtful insights, many of which gave voice to problems that I didn't quite realize I had with many current technologies. Though it starts off somewhat slow with a lot of media theory and (albeit essential) historical context, Morozov then dives into attacking the "solutionism" and "Internet-centrism" that too often propose to fix problems that don't actually need fixing.
For people who attempt to reform politics and circumvent the traditional party system through online democracy, the author replies that the Amazon model of endless choice does not apply well to our political system. For those who look to "the Internet" (as he mockingly refers to it) as a path to total transparency (i.e., publicizing all political donations), he questions the true utility of such transparency.
Morozov goes after websites like Yelp and Zagat that claim to obviate the need for professional food critics, arguing that there is in fact an art to food criticism that cannot simply be replaced by masses of people attending a restaurant one time each. He attacks the foolishness of the self-tracking movement, the way in which gamification trains people to pursue false rewards rather than civic duty, and the death of privacy (at least for those who can't afford to keep their data protected).
A few times throughout the book, I detected Morozov going after straw men or issuing questionable slippery-slope warnings. For example, he goes after "BinCam," a start-up that sought to gamify waste reduction by having people put a camera inside their trash can that would automatically upload photos of their refuse to the Internet, to gauge how much of their waste could actually be recycled. I agree with the author that such a venture should be subject to ridicule, but from what I can tell, BinCam didn't get very far. Morozov also fears that self-driving cars will make urban sprawl more likely because long commutes will be easier, and that Google will control even more aspects of its consumers' behavior by setting what someone can and can't see while wearing Google Glass. I tend to have more faith in people, that they will not allow themselves to become so beholden to technology as to abandon all common sense.
I do appreciate Morozov's final analysis -- that the proper role for technology should be tools that, rather than seeking to bring efficiency to every sphere of life and business, actually cause friction and help us understand the complex narratives behind the resources we use. For example, rather than smart meters that simply tell us how much energy our appliances suck up, Morozov extols the use of "troublemaker" devices, such as the robotic Caterpillar that convulses when the device it's attached to is in energy-wasting standby mode. This type of technology "can be used to improve the human condition ... it can provoke debate and lead us to question dominant social and political norms," he writes.
Basically, the ability of technology to make our individual lives easier is not the same as technology that makes our lives better, richer, and deeper. Imagine that.
For people who attempt to reform politics and circumvent the traditional party system through online democracy, the author replies that the Amazon model of endless choice does not apply well to our political system. For those who look to "the Internet" (as he mockingly refers to it) as a path to total transparency (i.e., publicizing all political donations), he questions the true utility of such transparency.
Morozov goes after websites like Yelp and Zagat that claim to obviate the need for professional food critics, arguing that there is in fact an art to food criticism that cannot simply be replaced by masses of people attending a restaurant one time each. He attacks the foolishness of the self-tracking movement, the way in which gamification trains people to pursue false rewards rather than civic duty, and the death of privacy (at least for those who can't afford to keep their data protected).
A few times throughout the book, I detected Morozov going after straw men or issuing questionable slippery-slope warnings. For example, he goes after "BinCam," a start-up that sought to gamify waste reduction by having people put a camera inside their trash can that would automatically upload photos of their refuse to the Internet, to gauge how much of their waste could actually be recycled. I agree with the author that such a venture should be subject to ridicule, but from what I can tell, BinCam didn't get very far. Morozov also fears that self-driving cars will make urban sprawl more likely because long commutes will be easier, and that Google will control even more aspects of its consumers' behavior by setting what someone can and can't see while wearing Google Glass. I tend to have more faith in people, that they will not allow themselves to become so beholden to technology as to abandon all common sense.
I do appreciate Morozov's final analysis -- that the proper role for technology should be tools that, rather than seeking to bring efficiency to every sphere of life and business, actually cause friction and help us understand the complex narratives behind the resources we use. For example, rather than smart meters that simply tell us how much energy our appliances suck up, Morozov extols the use of "troublemaker" devices, such as the robotic Caterpillar that convulses when the device it's attached to is in energy-wasting standby mode. This type of technology "can be used to improve the human condition ... it can provoke debate and lead us to question dominant social and political norms," he writes.
Basically, the ability of technology to make our individual lives easier is not the same as technology that makes our lives better, richer, and deeper. Imagine that.
March 7, 2014
In the end, while some could take this book as a reason not to boldly go forth and solve life's niggling problems, ultimately, for me, this book serves as a reminder that human's, in the end, adapt technology to make life better, and at each step along the way, yes, there are trade-offs, unintended consequences cause collateral damage, but ultimately, we work through those issues and we do arrive at a better place. I doubt many cavemen would chose to stay in the cave after experiencing all of our modern conveniences. Don't misunderstand, the book did not directly remind me of this, the book presents a darker view, I'm reminded of this having read the book and then looked again at reality--reminded that things aren't as the book suggest--we aren't swirling around an edge of a drain being pulled in by technological solutionism. One could have said this when fire was first used as an artificial way to stay warm, we found ways to control it, and the human species is better off.
People won't just submit to the tyranny of technology, to a technological overlord, we'll reject those solutions that control us...ultimately.
Having said that, this book definitely makes you question Silicon Valley's solutions to our everyday problems. Every solution presents its own problems, sometimes the unintended consequences of those solutions create bigger problems than they solve--we as engineers need to do more than simply produce solutions--we also need to own the potential impact, including collateral damage.
According to the author, many of the touted new solutions like gamification and crowdsourcing aren't as new as we think, and therefore, they can't be the automatic, revolutionary fix we are looking for.
This is a must read for those obsessed with sharing their self quantification (data sexuals)--the author definitely challenges the value of doing so, while providing a balanced set of reasons why it may hurt more than it helps.
I found balance in the authors discussion of Nudge (Sunstein & Thayler)--coverage that I personally liked. Nudging, like "precrime" detection, will definitely back fire.
The author relentlessly takes various luminaries from the Internet to task (especially Clay Shirky), working to refute their claims. The tone is rough, like 100 grit sandpaper, making it hard to keep reading, but read I did.
People won't just submit to the tyranny of technology, to a technological overlord, we'll reject those solutions that control us...ultimately.
Having said that, this book definitely makes you question Silicon Valley's solutions to our everyday problems. Every solution presents its own problems, sometimes the unintended consequences of those solutions create bigger problems than they solve--we as engineers need to do more than simply produce solutions--we also need to own the potential impact, including collateral damage.
According to the author, many of the touted new solutions like gamification and crowdsourcing aren't as new as we think, and therefore, they can't be the automatic, revolutionary fix we are looking for.
This is a must read for those obsessed with sharing their self quantification (data sexuals)--the author definitely challenges the value of doing so, while providing a balanced set of reasons why it may hurt more than it helps.
I found balance in the authors discussion of Nudge (Sunstein & Thayler)--coverage that I personally liked. Nudging, like "precrime" detection, will definitely back fire.
The author relentlessly takes various luminaries from the Internet to task (especially Clay Shirky), working to refute their claims. The tone is rough, like 100 grit sandpaper, making it hard to keep reading, but read I did.
July 27, 2016
This book is what you might call a mixed bag. On one hand, Morozov has some really interesting, and possibly important things to say, on the other hand, this book is full of strawmen (regiments of them, legions of them, armies of them), ad hominem attacks, overstatements, sweeping generalizations and repeated attacks against the same easy targets. Every time he rants about "geeks", I want to interrupt and demand he explain just who he’s ranting about. Morozov is definitely at his best when addressing specific issues instead of generalities.
As you might have gathered, this book is not written in a neutral tone; I believe the author felt he was writing a thundering, magisterial take down of the foolishness of blind internet worship and solutionism, but the result is more like a dyspeptic, curmudgeonly rant. It doesn’t work for me. Which is a pity, because the tendency among the technical set to try to fix, replace or do away things they don’t understand can lead to real problems, and it should be discussed (although many of specific forms of silliness he objects to have already vanished since the publication of this book, to be replaced, to be sure, by other, equally silly ideas (see the crypto-currency crowd for example)).
I think there was a real effort to aim this book at the same general audience that buys business books, which would explain the tone (well, to some extent), short sections, and the lack of visible notes in the text (the end notes reference pages in the text, but I don’t find that nearly as useful as notes in the text referencing the end notes). If this book was so aimed, I think it limits its effectiveness as a serious, adult argument against internet-centerism and solutionism. The author is also somewhat inconsistent -- in the last chapter he introduces some forms of solutionism that he personally likes, but they are just as problematic and manipulative as the ones he decries (although they are probably less harmful as they are also extremely unlikely to have any actual effect on the real world).
As you might have gathered, this book is not written in a neutral tone; I believe the author felt he was writing a thundering, magisterial take down of the foolishness of blind internet worship and solutionism, but the result is more like a dyspeptic, curmudgeonly rant. It doesn’t work for me. Which is a pity, because the tendency among the technical set to try to fix, replace or do away things they don’t understand can lead to real problems, and it should be discussed (although many of specific forms of silliness he objects to have already vanished since the publication of this book, to be replaced, to be sure, by other, equally silly ideas (see the crypto-currency crowd for example)).
I think there was a real effort to aim this book at the same general audience that buys business books, which would explain the tone (well, to some extent), short sections, and the lack of visible notes in the text (the end notes reference pages in the text, but I don’t find that nearly as useful as notes in the text referencing the end notes). If this book was so aimed, I think it limits its effectiveness as a serious, adult argument against internet-centerism and solutionism. The author is also somewhat inconsistent -- in the last chapter he introduces some forms of solutionism that he personally likes, but they are just as problematic and manipulative as the ones he decries (although they are probably less harmful as they are also extremely unlikely to have any actual effect on the real world).
September 27, 2016
This was a very frustating book for me. For the most part, I am on the same side as Morozov, but I think his arguments are imprecise in a way that will lead to people rejecting his premise and this book.
As he hits out at solutionism, he does so rather indiscriminately. There are quite a few things he mentions as problematic that to my mind are unqualified good ends of technology, the worst offender political transparency.
He makes the argument (poorly) that we need to allow politicians to be able to lie in order to let politics continue to function. I reject the notion that A) holding politicians accountable for the things they say will prevent politics from continuing, as well as B) that politics continuing as they are now is a "good" in and of itself. This was the line that really got me w/r/t transparency:
There is a great difference between being able to regret and being able to delete a paper trail. It's preposterous to me that politicians shouldn't be held accountable for the things they say, mistake or not. I see no difference between displaying a deleted tweet and printing (or airing) a comment made when a politician didn't know the mic was live. Would Morozov really argue that the media shouldn't have reported on Reagan's "we begin bombing in five minutes" gaffe, or any of the other similar fuck ups prior to the release of twitter? I can't fathom it.
There's a lot of good to be found in this book (particularly the psychological effect of gamification as applied to social good, imo), but stupid arguments greatly detract from this work.
As he hits out at solutionism, he does so rather indiscriminately. There are quite a few things he mentions as problematic that to my mind are unqualified good ends of technology, the worst offender political transparency.
He makes the argument (poorly) that we need to allow politicians to be able to lie in order to let politics continue to function. I reject the notion that A) holding politicians accountable for the things they say will prevent politics from continuing, as well as B) that politics continuing as they are now is a "good" in and of itself. This was the line that really got me w/r/t transparency:
Politwoops, a project of the Sunlight Foundation, collects and highlights tweets deleted by politicians, as if they should never be granted an opportunity to regret what they say. Perhaps the Sunlight Foundation would prefer that politicians say nothing at all.
There is a great difference between being able to regret and being able to delete a paper trail. It's preposterous to me that politicians shouldn't be held accountable for the things they say, mistake or not. I see no difference between displaying a deleted tweet and printing (or airing) a comment made when a politician didn't know the mic was live. Would Morozov really argue that the media shouldn't have reported on Reagan's "we begin bombing in five minutes" gaffe, or any of the other similar fuck ups prior to the release of twitter? I can't fathom it.
There's a lot of good to be found in this book (particularly the psychological effect of gamification as applied to social good, imo), but stupid arguments greatly detract from this work.
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