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What I'm Reading: Evgeny Morozov, "Click Here to Save Everything"
🕑 Added 2018-01-31 19:40:13 +0000 UTC
This was a challenging read, and not challenging in the sense of the prose being difficult but that refreshing kind of challenging that made me take a hard look at what I do as a YouTuber and how I think about my work and the media through which I do it. It’s a book about the philosophy of technology, in which Morozov critiques the twin evils of “Solutionism” - the tendency to seek out technological quick-fixes that ignore existing complications, ambiguities, and power relations - and “Internet-Centrism.” Morozov puts “The Internet” in quotes frequently to highlight the fact that, contra Internet-Centrism, Online is not a fixed, given entity with its own nature and telos. Between combatting these ideas he also finds time to do some startlingly sparkling philosophy centred on themes of political transparency, hypocrisy, corruption, and the interplay between morals and the law, as well as artificial intelligence.
In some places I had questions: I would have been curious to hear more about “moral environments,” an idea from John Dewey that gets picked up for a few pages during a discussion of digital law enforcement but then dropped, and although Morozov criticises Rational Choice Theory near the beginning I think he relies on it later on to make a few minor points. One or two sections veer a little into what seems like dystopian speculation or Black Mirror What-Iffery without support.
The book keeps moving briskly enough that none of these issues develop into fatal flaws, however. I came for the philosophy and stayed for the history: one standout section explains the impact of the printing press and how many scholars devolve into “vulgar McLuhanism” when discussing it (and, by comparison, “The Internet.”)
This one comes highly recommended for anyone who spends time online, which perforce includes you! Thank you to Stephen Wuchina, who sent it to me from my Amazon wishlist. Expect to see it cited on multiple upcoming episodes of Philosophy Tube!
Comments
Lord Lav
Sounds interesting and well worth a butcher's. Olly, speaking of 'the printing press' I seriously recommend you read 'Power without Responsibility' by James Curran and Jean Seaton, if you haven't already read it. It's a book about the history of British media all the way up to present day, showing many of the flaws within the media and how it had to move more to the right due to its dependency on advertising amongst numerous other points. As I understand it runs similarly to that of Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent (although I haven't read MC yet) but specifically to British media...
