Technology may not have taken over the world, but it is making quite good progress in taking over our lives. Thirty years ago, receiving a phone call was the height of communication stimulus. Now, we are programmed to expect several emails an hour and can become anxious if we don’t receive them. It’s worse than a bad habit. Scientists suggest the constant distractions offered by technology have even altered the chemical balance in our brains.
The information revolution has made us more connected, switched-on and informed than ever before. Thanks to near-universal access to the internet, humans can access almost every piece of knowledge accumulated by mankind in the blink of an eye. Even The Jetsons did not predict how ingrained communication technology would become in our lives.
All this free exchange of information has affected our thinking about dogma. Society’s consensus has shifted, so if an idea comes from the digital world it is treated as a message from the future: an instruction, to be enacted in all areas of our lives. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in politics. Why should ministers and mandarins operate behind closed doors when their every movement can be put online? Why hold fundraising dinners in smoke-free rooms when you can donate through a website? Why not put the whole of the civil service online?
Enter Evgeny Morozov — a lone voice defying the consensus. Prophesying the future of technology may be a mug’s game, but he is one mug who does it well. Morozov is a prominent sceptic of ‘the net’, who has argued for caution with the rapid pace at which technology is evolving. In his first book, The Net Delusion, Morozov demolished the argument that the internet was a catalyst for the Arab Spring. Now, in To Save Everything, Click Here, he is gunning for ‘big data’ — the current buzzword among the ever-optimistic Silicon Valley nerds. His subject, then, is the possibilities — and dangers — of manipulating the astronomical quantities of data stored online.
The book explains the threat posed by a digital version of the architectural concept ‘solutionism, an unhealthy preoccupation with sexy, monumental, and narrow-minded solutions’. Practically, this is solving problems that don’t really exist. Morozov describes a dystopian world of 2020 — an automated, highly monitored place controlled by ‘internet-centrism’ — and breaks down how it could happen tomorrow or right now.
Thanks to the inherent need of computer scientists to solve problems, Morozov contends, the combination of the internet and ‘big data’ will soon wrap its tentacles around every corner of our lives. This leads to his warning: having all this information at our fingertips risks diminishing our sense of creativity and intelligence, since we gain pleasure from tackling the flaws in human nature. Is our sense of individuality doomed?
There are plenty of counter-arguments. Facebook didn’t stop us speaking to people, one might argue. Libyan rebels, after all, did more than ‘unfriend’ Colonel Gaddafi. Computers didn’t stop us thinking and Wikipedia has not stopped us reading books. The march of the machines has not (yet) led to a digital lobotomy. And our lives have been enhanced by inventions that would have been strangled at birth if the Silicon Valley dreamers — whom Morozov lambasts throughout this book — had been cautious in their thinking.
But this book is not a crie de coeur from a digital Luddite. If you are perplexed by the technology-obsessed world we inhabit, there is no better guide than Morozov. He understands the digital universe — and its dangers — as well as anyone, and is concerned about how technology has become a new religion, with policymakers and pundits worshipping at its altar. His thoughts offer invaluable insights into what to expect in the next few years.
The flaw lies in the author’s love-hate relationship with technology. Throughout, Morozov explains a wonderful new invention before predicting that it will turn us into narcissistic robots. Take a theoretical kitchen system that monitors cooking ingredients. Crafting the perfect soufflé is now possible for anyone, but the cook becomes no more than a machine operator.
Although the book is full of rational thoughts, it is hard to get away from the whiff of the very solutionism Morozov detests. This is a thesis from an author in mid-thought — and he has yet to identify the exact problem he is solving. His conclusion may come in a less theoretical book — provided, of course, that we digitally-sedated humans are alive enough to read it.
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