I agree with Joshua and i enjoyed his piece.
Il giorno venerdì 3 gennaio 2014, Yosem Companys ha scritto: > January 03, 2014 > > On Evgeny Morozov > > by Joshua Cohen, Boston Review > > Evgeny Morozov, a contributing editor at Boston Review, is a > compulsive problematizer. I hate that word “problematizer,” but it > leaps to mind when I think about Evgeny, who is the focus of a new > profile by Michael Meyer in the Columbia Journalism Review. (In the > name of the overrated value of transparency, I should say that Evgeny > is a friend, though as you will see from the profile, I am not a > cheerleader. I think he is curmudgeonly to a fault, and think that the > criticism he practices is easier than the construction he should.) > > Maybe a better way to say it is that Evgeny is a question-man, not an > answer-man. He asks lots of very important questions in service of > skepticism: not exactly skepticism about technology, but a sharply > critical skepticism about some—as he sees it—widespread, unthinking, > and humanly damaging ways of writing and talking about technology, > especially information and communication technology. > > Boston Review published many of Evgeny’s early long-form essays, > beginning with “Texting Toward Utopia,” which took on the then-popular > assumption that the Internet is a powerful force for spreading > democracy. He also wrote, more than two years ago, about the > “backdoor” surveillance infrastructure being built as part of the war > on terror. In “Passing Through, Why the Open Internet is Worth > Saving,” he wrote in support of “net neutrality,” while trying to > rescue it from some of its friends. > > Evgeny is also the author of two important books: The Net Delusion: > The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (PublicAffairs, 2011) and, most > recently, To Save Everything, Click Here (PublicAffairs, 2013). > > The Net Delusion (building on the arguments in “Texting Toward > Utopia”) provided a sustained critique of some extravagant claims > about the Internet’s political promise. The Internet, you may recall, > was going to be the great solvent of authoritarian rule: the > technology of freedom that would enable people to escape from the > controlled communication, thus controlled thought and conduct, > associated with authoritarianism. In 1999, George Bush said: “imagine > if the Internet took hold in China. Imagine how freedom would spread.” > In 2009, Andrew Sullivan said—in reference to Iran’s Green > Revolution—“the revolution will be twittered.” And not just that: > Wikipedia provided a model for decentralized, team collaboration. Why > not Wiki-government? The Internet would not only unmake > authoritarianism: it would remake democracy. > > Evgeny’s first book was a powerful dissent from this cyber-utopian > outlook: described byThe Economist as “a provocative, enlightening and > welcome riposte to the cyber-utopian worldview.” I think it is fair to > say that that worldview has fewer proponents now. Many more people > realize that authoritarians are not all-thumbs when it comes to > information technology; that communication is not the same as > concerted action; and that most people go online for less elevated > purposes than overthrowing authoritarian rule or fostering more > participatory governance. There may be a delta, but it is not obvious > how big it is. > > To Save Everything, Click Here is also critical: not exclusively, but > principally. The target of Evgeny’s criticism is an “amelioration > orgy” that he associates with Silicon Valley. “In the past few years,” > Evgeny says, “Silicon Valley’s favorite slogan has quietly changed > from ‘Innovate or Die’ to ‘Ameliorate or Die.’” The book describes, > powerfully and in insightful detail, a series of projects of > amelioration: self-tracking devices that provide remedies for obesity, > insomnia, heavy carbon footprints, and the limitations of memory. > Information and communication strategies for remedying political > corruption, hypocrisy, opacity, and all the hurdles to informed civic > engagement. Algorithms that help us figure out what to read and where > to eat. Information technology solutions for preempting crime, keeping > the jerks out of the clubs, helping the needy while having fun, > connecting with distant strangers while distancing from connected > neighbors. You get the idea—though to really get it you need to read > the book. (That said, the book is not really about Silicon Valley: it > has more references to Jane McGonigal than to Steve Jobs. It is really > about the assumptions of some intellectuals who write about > information technology.) > > The Net Delusion criticized the idea that new communication > technologies would serve the emancipatory goal that proponents said > they would serve. It focused on the effectiveness of the means in > achieving the ends. To Save Everything is about ends, not means. > Assume for the sake of argument, he says, that the ameliorative orgy > ends in boundless success: obesity conquered; jerks out of the good > clubs; bad guys incapacitated; politics cleansed of hypocrisy and > opacity; forgetfulness solved; carbon footprints reduced; assistance > to the needy turned into a fun game. > > What could be wrong with that? Two things. Evgeny challenges the orgy > of amelioration, first, by arguing that the ameliorative solutions > often turn public problems into private ones: don’t regulate the > content of food; give people enough information to nudge them to > better personal choices. They promise success by first diminishing the > magnitude of the problem. Second, he celebrates the virtues of our > vices. Some of life’s good things come from ignorance rather than > knowledge; opacity rather than transparency; ambivalence rather than > certainty; vagueness rather than precision; hypocrisy rather than > sincerity; messy inefficiency rather than tidiness; good enough rather > than perfect; time-consuming, indecisive, head-holding pondering > rather than algorithmic offloading or gamified nudges. > > Evgeny is not alone in these ideas. La Rochefoucauld famously > celebrated hypocrisy as the homage that vice pays to virtue. But > Evgeny does not think he has much company in Silicon Valley (at least > as he imagines it). The problem is that his Silicon-Valley-of-the-mind > suffers from (and spreads to others) the ideological blinder of > solutionism, aided and abetted by its companion blinder of > Internet-centrism. Those blinders fuel the ameliorative orgy—an orgy > of fixing, in which the tools for fixing help to define (often by > diminishing) what needs to be fixed in the first place. So we need to > “unlearn solutionism” and the limits it imposes on our thinking in > order even to ask whether all the technological amelioration is “worth > the price.” > > If you are wondering what “solutionism” amounts to, and want to start > down your own path of unlearning, you would do well to begin with > Terry Winograd’s interview with Evgeny, “What’s Wrong with > Technological Fixes?” > > > http://www.bostonreview.net/blog/joshua-cohen-evgeny-morozov#.UscRGAts2e8.twitter > -- > Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations > of list guidelines will get you moderated: > https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. > Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at > [email protected] <javascript:;>. > -- Andrea Stroppa http://huffingtonpost.com/andrea-stroppa @andst7
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