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Summary
Summary
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
In the very near future, "smart" technologies and "big data" will allow us to make large-scale and sophisticated interventions in politics, culture, and everyday life. Technology will allow us to solve problems in highly original ways and create new incentives to get more people to do the right thing. But how will such "solutionism" affect our society, once deeply political, moral, and irresolvable dilemmas are recast as uncontroversial and easily manageablematters of technological efficiency? What if some such problems are simply vices in disguise? What if some friction in communication is productive and some hypocrisy in politics necessary? The temptation of the digital age is to fix everything--from crime to corruption to pollution to obesity--by digitally quantifying, tracking, or gamifying behavior. But when we change the motivations for our moral, ethical, and civic behavior we may also change the very nature of that behavior. Technology, Evgeny Morozov proposes, can be a force for improvement--but only if we keep solutionism in check and learn to appreciate the imperfections of liberal democracy. Some of those imperfections are not accidental but by design.
Arguing that we badly need a new, post-Internet way to debate the moral consequences of digital technologies, To Save Everything, Click Here warns against a world of seamless efficiency, where everyone is forced to wear Silicon Valley's digital straitjacket.
Author Notes
Evgeny Morozov (@evgenymorozov) is the author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom , a New York Times Notable Book of 2011 and winner of Harvard's Kennedy School's 2012 Goldsmith Book Prize. He is a senior editor to The New Republic . His articles have appeared in the New York Times , the Financial Times , the Economist , the Wall Street Journal , the London Review of Books , and many other publications. His monthly column comes out in Slate , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany), El Pais (Spain), Corriere della Sera (Italy), and several other newspapers. He was born in Belarus.
Reviews (4)
Guardian Review
If you think the messiness and inefficiency of political and cultural life are problems that should be fixed using technology, you are a "solutionist". If you think that the age of Twitter and online sneezing cats is so unlike anything that has gone before that we must tear up the rule-book of civilisation, you are an "epochalist". Such coinages are one of the amusements of reading Evgeny Morozov, one of our most penetrating and brilliantly sardonic critics of techno-utopianism. The cyberhustlers are constantly declaring Year Zero and demanding that society be reformed according to the requirements of "the Internet". The important and admirably fufilled purpose of his book is to argue "that there are good reasons not to run our politics as a start-up . . . that there are good reasons to value subjective but high-quality criticism, even if it doesn't stem from the 'wisdom of crowds' [. . . and] that numbers often tell us less than we think and quantification as such might actually thwart reforms." Data-dissidents of the world, unite: you have nothing to lose but your targeted adverts. - Steven Poole If you think the messiness and inefficiency of political and cultural life are problems that should be fixed using technology, you are a "solutionist". If you think that the age of Twitter and online sneezing cats is so unlike anything that has gone before that we must tear up the rule-book of civilisation, you are an "epochalist". - Steven Poole.
Kirkus Review
More righteous technological contrarianism from Morozov (The Net Delusion, 2011, etc.). Can technology solve social problems? To an extent, perhaps, writes the author. But for every Utopian application of a computer, dystopia awaits: Technology may afford hitherto disenfranchised or at least undercounted people an equal voice, but inside the world of clicks, likes and read-throughs lurk dragons. Morozov, who calls himself a "digital heretic," doesn't offer fully fleshed solutions to the problems a detechnologized world poses, but he dislikes the thought of the "frictionless future" all the same, even if its contours are sometimes vague. Having had experience with totalitarianism, Morozov is bothered by the prospect of social engineers having ever brighter and shinier tools at their disposal: "All will be tempted to exploit the power of these new techniques, either individually or in combination, to solve a particular problem, be it obesity, climate change, or congestion." It's not that those problems aren't real; it's that, by Morozov's account, what underlies them are things human and not technological, requiring human solutions. Thus it is, he writes, that the brave new world of online education may be exciting to many, but it overlooks a strong component of academic success--namely, the face-to-face (F2F, that is) access students have to their professors. And as for a disintermediating site such as Rate Your Professors? It's just another avatar, writes Morozov, of the introduction of "the consumerist mentality into education." Healthy skepticism dealt with a sometimes too-heavy hand, and a useful corrective for those who believe that we'll somehow engineer ourselves out of our current mess.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
HOW can you resist a book whose first chapter begins: "Have you ever peeked inside a friend's trash can? I have." Trash is like "one's sex life," the book continues, "the less said about it, the better." Yet the Internet can convert this private affair into an object of public surveillance, and Evgeny Morozov tells you how. Cameras in your trash bin help determine if you are doing a good job of sorting recyclables. Your score is computed and, via the Net, is compared to the scores of other sorters. If you win, you will be rewarded with praise. Those doing a bad job will be subjected to social scorn. This is no technophobic nightmare. Project BinCam is already being studied in Britain and Germany. The BinCam example encapsulates what Morozov, a contributing editor at The New Republic, will go on to discuss in "To Save Everything, Click Here." The book crackles with intellectual energy and is encyclopedic in scope, examining the effects of technology on subjects ranging from politics to criminology to the endless quest to lose weight. One might wish for less breadth and more focus, however; often we barely have time to think about one topic when we are off to the next. Still, Morozov's overall perspective is vital and important. He derides an ideology he calls "Internet-centrism," which defines the network not as a tool created by fallible human beings but as a creed to live by. The chief promoters of this ideology have projected upon the Internet certain values they imagine to be intrinsic, among them the imperatives to be open and transparent and efficient and digitally "social"; to believe that knowledge is created through data collection and algorithmic analysis; to believe that the minute quantification of existence is the path to self-awareness. In this Internet-centric view, the Net stands outside of history. It has brought us to an epochal moment - the culmination of all human invention. We therefore should live in accordance with its values. The Internet is a human creation; "the Internet" is a god to obey. The margins of my copy of Morozov's book are filled with annotations. Check marks for a good thought: "Is there really no space for deception in our dealings with others or ourselves?" Stars for bits I want to read to friends: a Forbes journalist used software that quantified her every move and told her she is "happiest when drinking at bars." Exclamation points for disbelief that anyone would say that, as in this strange idea from a "gamification" promoter: "What if we decided to use everything we know about game design to fix what's wrong with reality?" Reading the book is like arriving late to a dinner party where an erudite guest is holding forth at the head of the table. Morozov is arguing with people you have never met; quoting from books you may have never read; referring to batteries of sources that may send you to iPhone searches under the tablecloth. He is shaking his fist at vague opponents, including "pundits," "Silicon Valley," anyone with "a Palo Alto ZIP code," and ideas promulgated at TED conferences. The argument is forceful and passionate, but its polemical tone is wearying. Morozov seems not to trust the judgment of his audience. He is right, but relentlessly right, as if none but fools could possibly disagree with him. But just as you are about to tune out - more wine, please - you realize that Morozov is taking up the cause of human values against those of the machine, and you feel compelled to sit up and listen. He dares to see the Internet's fundamental credo of openness as a tyranny. He suggests that access to some information should be restricted, which in the Networld is a sin second only to murder. He decries the ideology of "transparency," reminding us that no human relationship can survive without innuendo, mystery, even lying. He exposes the damage of "truthfulness" indexes that troll the Internet for beliefs expressed by public figures, punishing anyone with the audacity to let his thoughts evolve over time. He warns against "solutionism," with which "problems" are identified according to Internet "values" (efficiency is good; politics is messy; make politics efficient). He helps us remember that generations before us - amazed at the electric light and the telegraph and the radio - also believed they had arrived at the zenith of human achievement. At the same time, Morozov cautions against "technological defeatism," the idea that computing cannot be designed to solve human problems. The final chapter describes a philosophy called "adversarial design," in which systems force us to confront moral issues and "turn us into more reflective, caring and humane creatures." Examples include a smart parking meter that makes you decide which would be "more virtuous": leaving any remaining time for the next driver (social courtesy) or letting it reset to zero (benefiting the municipality). In another system, appliances become erratic when household power consumption increases: a radio changes stations; a toaster suddenly stops working. (One imagines the dismay of a frantic parent making a child's breakfast.) There is also a program designed to make users more aware of privacy issues by returning better search results when they "are forced to reveal something intimate about themselves or even their friends." These examples prompted many exclamation points of disbelief in my margins. Until now, Morozov has been arguing that moral issues must be approached through the mysteries of human relationships, the messy processes of political and social debate. But here, suddenly, he is advocating systems in which designers have defined the issues and determined the correct lessons to be learned. THE overall tenor of the book is an argument between Morozov and his ideological enemies: those he sees as the arch champions of Internet-centrism. Foremost among them are the legal scholar Lawrence Lessig (demeaned so often you feel sorry for him), the author Clay Shirky, the technophile Kevin Kelly and the journalist Gary Wolf. Morozov calls his opponents "geeks." To which I responded with my most plentiful marginal note: "not a geek." Author: not a geek. Pundit: not a geek. Scholar: not a geek. Journalist: not a geek. I must rescue "geek" from Morozov's rhetorical clutches. The designation belongs to the programmers, engineers and computer scientists who built and are still building the Internet. Geek forums are full of lively debates, down to the ways specific network protocols affect economic and social structures. Morozov seems unaware of these forums or has chosen to ignore them. It is puzzling that he doesn't acknowledge that something very much like Internet-centrism was described as "cybernetic totalism" in "You Are Not a Gadget," by the wonderfully geeky Jaron Lanier, a book that Morozov himself reviewed a few years ago. In "To Save Everything, Click Here," readers see programmers only through the eyes of an anthropologist, as if technical people belonged to some just-discovered aboriginal tribe and cannot speak for themselves. It is a pity the author did not talk directly to the technical community, because we would support his belief that the Net really is embedded in history, is made up of cables and routers and servers, and is created by mortal human beings. Morozov's formidable intellect makes this a noteworthy book. A dose of humility would have made it a better one. Morozov's opponents include anyone with a 'Palo Alto ZIP code' and ideas promulgated at TED conferences. Ellen Ullman is a former software engineer. Her most recent book is the novel "By Blood."
Choice Review
This book is an intellectually probing, if somewhat caustic, work that aims to dispel the seemingly mythologized notion of "the Internet" as the ultimate technological achievement. Morozov (journalist; The Net Delusion, CH, Aug'11, 48-7161) argues that the Internet is merely a glorified appliance that eases the completion of tasks that people previously performed in other ways. He argues that people fetishize the Internet by claiming it can tell people something important about how the world works or that it can provide the key to creating better public policy. This "Internet-centrism" tends to feed a "solutionist mind-set" that presumes problems instead of investigating them. Morozov argues for a post-Internet approach that secularizes or demystifies this technology. No one is safe in his Molotov cocktail-like critique. Technology proponents and critics alike are pilloried throughout for adopting Internet-centric positions to justify their arguments. At times, the author's criticism seems narrow-minded. In contrast to N. Carr's The Shallows (CH, Nov'10, 48-1521), this book unfairly dismisses an insightful, well-reasoned criticism on how individuals interact with and are affected by this technology. Nevertheless, Morozov has much to offer to the ongoing cultural debate over the Internet--aggrandized or not--and its place in society. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; general readers. J. A. Bullian Hillsborough Community College