Book Review: The Net Delusion – How Not To Liberate The World
The Net Delusion – How Not To Liberate The World, by Evgeny Morozov, is an excellent read on many levels. The central concepts in the book are that of cyber-utopianism
a naive belief in the emancipatory nature of online communication that rests on a stubborn refusal to acknowledge its downside
and Internet-centrism
a philosophy of action that informs how decisions, including those that deal with democracy promotion, are made and how long-term strategies are crafted.
Even if you have no interest in liberating the world and promoting democratization, Morozov’s concepts of cyber-utopianism and Internet-centrism are equally applicable to business and personal dealings and worth reading for this reason alone. In addition, Morozov raises valid concerns regarding the dominance and power of US service providers, especially since they are not immune to US government interference and can act with impunity when it comes to a large portion of the worlds population’s sensitive personal data.
Finally, Morozov warns against the “digital visionaries” that are seemingly ever present nowadays in all spheres of life, with entire consultancies based on, and by definition biased towards, the virtues of tweeting, Facebooking and advertising online. Such online social visionaries bring back memories of the Dot-com bubble, except this time its the Dot-social bubble. A memorable quote in this regard:
..most digital visionaries see the Web as a Swiss army knife ready for any job at hand. They rarely alert us to the information black-holes creates by the Internet, from the sprawling surveillance apparatus facilitated by the public nature of social neworking to the persistence of myth making and propaganda, which is much easier to produce and distribute in a world where every fringe movement blogs, tweets, and Facebooks.
Personally, I would give the book 9/10 and recommend it as a worthy read along-side with Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine and No Logo.
