To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism

Synopsis

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 manageable matters 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.

Copyright:

2014

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9781610391399

Related ISBNs:

9781610391399, 9781610391382

Publisher:

PublicAffairs

Date of Addition:

04/23/20

Copyrighted By:

Evgeny Morozov.

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Computers and Internet, Communication, Politics and Government

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.