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

New York: PublicAffairs, 2014 — 432 p. — ISBN10: 1610393708; ISBN13: 978-1610393706.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.Solutionism and Its Discontents
The Nonsense of 'the Internet' — and How to Stop It
So Open It Hurts
How to Break Politics by Fixing It
The Perils of Algorithmic Gatekeeping
Less Crime, More Punishment
Galton's iPhone
The Superhuman Condition
Smart Gadgets, Dumb HumansPostscript