Came across this an alarming but important book called “The Internet is NOT the Answer” (2015) by Andrew Keen, a well known commentator based in Silicon Valley. Written by an industry veteran- it is obviously a ringside view, and buttressed by extensive and credible references. This, and others like this, bring to mind three basic issues with the internet based economy as it is evolving today:
- First basic issue – which people can see and are protesting – is Privacy
- But the larger issue – is that the human mind is being influenced by a few who control the platforms (like Facebook and Google) – and as yet, people haven’t yet started to realize the impact this is having.
- And all this is leading to a future issue, which is going to dwarf everything else. Even those who think that they are in control, will get swamped by the speed of evolution of machine learning. It’s not just science fiction any more- but within the realms of possibility and even probability that one day, artificial intelligence starts to control human intelligence. Bulwarks have to be put in place now.
Piques your interest? You have to read the book, but some interesting takeaways below.
The book starts out describing what we know already. As is by now familiar – in the space of one generation, the digital world and the networked society is reshaping employment, identity, privacy, prosperity justice, civility at breakneck speed. In some of my previous posts, I referred to some amazing possibilities that it has unleashed. Can Disruptive Innovation Alter Our Life Span? and Artificial Intelligence and its impact on Jobs and Society, or even The Thrill and Danger of Smart Cities -for example. But this book describes how Internet, rather than being a win-win as it set out to be, has grown to now become a negative feedback loop – and where we, the network users, are its victims rather than beneficiaries. First we shape our tools, and then our tools shape us!
We are all quite inured now to the reality where majority of us beaver away doing unpaid shadow work – and uploading our data on a voluntary basis- (beguiled by the promise of “free”!). But the privacy issues that these new internet business models so gleefully espouse, boggles the mind. Meanwhile, all this goes to enrich a privileged few in an ever more “winner takes all” top-heavy manner, creating powerful new monopolies, while laying waste to venerable institutions and changing the structure of entire industries and (through automation and AI) leading to mass unemployment. Because, in fact, these “free” social networks are accelerating even more the distribution of unlicensed content- while Silicon Valley continues to be the biggest beneficiary of the Maker revolution, at the expense of the “makers”. To top it all, this new “data-based economy” is enabling all-pervasive mass surveillance of every citizen collectively and individually, permanent and relentless…while the tech monopolists themselves are subject to very little regulation or scrutiny, if at all. Akin to the postmaster being privy to the contents of our letters just because of delivering it! So far, we have trusted in self-governance and the promise of “Do No Evil” credo informing their every action. But can this last without more active engagement by citizenry themselves?
The book is a bit thin on solutions to the imbroglio, even in the last chapter entitled “the Answer”. But there is ample reference to more reading material and to the authors and thinkers who are lined up on either side of this polarizing debate. There are limits to self-regulation, after all, and the policy of “doing no evil” works better when the scale is small and the numbers are miniscule. And as the saying goes, power does tend to corrupt; and absolute power can corrupt absolutely.
Some tech evangelists may view Mr. Keen as a shrill polemic and a “controversial” writer. But refreshingly- rather than being a dry tome- his writing is very readable by the lay public. Chapters have pithy, striking headings, building up to the main point in a nice sequence – such as “The Catastrophe of Abundance”; “Crystal Man”; “Epic Fail”. There’s vivid imagery, where the Internet ecosystem is compared to the setting in Tolkien’s book “The Lord of the Rings”; powerful tech oligarchs set up massive fortresses and moats to shut out the majority, a weary populace of serfs. There’s also comparison with the hierarchical social structure prevalent in the TV series “Downton Abbey”- but with today’s tech elite in Silicon Valley having all of the perks but few of the traditional values of the aristocracy; social hierarchies without social constraints; and massive rewards without accompanying responsibility. However the main importance of books like this is in the questions they raise.
And to my mind, this topic is all the more urgent because Artificial Intelligence is making such giant leaps that it is now actually possible, in our lifetimes, that machine will overtake man in every thing that is important for life itself. Meanwhile there is really no universally agreed “manifesto” or code of ethics or framework to guide developers and practitioners alike. No “Wealth and Poverty of Nations” or “Das Kapital” or “Bible” or “Bhagavad Gita” to provide guidance or theoretical framework. The book doesn’t mention it, but one wonders if any efforts are underway to develop this – that too in an open source way? In contrast, so far many tech writers are predicting the likely parameters of a Life after the Robot Apocalypse.
External controls don’t always have to stem from government action and there is a place for self-regulation. So, rather than an Internet Bill of Rights, time to cobble together an Internet Bill of Responsibilities that establishes a new social contract for every member of a networked society? Rebuttals to these charges can be sought from the lead recipients of the tech bonanza, who are currently “secretive corporations as yet largely unaccountable to the public”. But it is crucial that innovation in policy, regulation, and social governance have to accompany the technological advancement. Researchers have to start cobbling together a framework that offers a structured way of countering these effects with a robust and institutionalized methodology. And things like competition law, breakup of monopolies, imposition of Chinese walls etc remain as important as ever. At any rate laissez-faire won’t cut it any longer.
All in all- a topic worth debating and thinking though. There’s obviously two sides to every debate – and we hope for all our collective sake that things will work out well, as we’d hate to lose the powerful tools we have by now gotten so used to. Otherwise, as a society we might find ourselves like the proverbial Brahmin of legend, who rode a tiger but could not figure out how to get off – without getting eaten for its lunch! And that would be such a shame indeed.
PS: A few other authors he lists – could be worth reading:
- Chrystia Freeland, author of “Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else (2012)”
- William Powers, author of “Hamlet’s Blackberry- A Practical Philosophy for building a good life in the Digital Age” (2010)
- Internet historians, sociologists and commentators like Mathew Ingram of GigaOm; Richard Sennett; John Naughton; Rebecca Solnit; Brad Stone
And although I read this book in hard copy, through the power of the Internet (:-)) I discovered that this may pair well with several other new books as well:
- Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class
- Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance
- The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains- by Nicholas Carr
- Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Voyage of Discovery 