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The Internet is Not the Answer by Andrew Keen (2015)
, 30 Jul 2015
I am old enough to remember the day that Google, my favourite online site and bunch of ethical geeks at the time, informed the world that the need for funds to keep Google improving was "forcing" them to add advertisements. I was watching the midday news at my parents'. I was utterly disappointed. I felt betrayed in a way because I felt that this was a sugar-coated lie. I thought, they were like everybody else, the same crap. It was not the need for funds, it was the wish to make money.
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Keen knows his trade and his field of expertise and that shows in a book that is well written and referenced and with no typo in sight. Keen channels, like a medium in trance, the voices of myriad critical Internet experts to create a patchwork of a discourse made by stitching together opinions that are not his but, actually, are his. Keen does not hold his forked tongue a bit and speaks of people (names and all) and facts with irreverence and nausea, irritation and despair, but also with depth, insight and passion.
Keen does a great job at summarising for us the History of the Internet from its gestation, birth, the arrival of the web 1.0 and the complete reinvention of Internet 2.0 with its different phases. The book explains in simple language the differences between the old and the contemporary Internet, how Internet went from a helpful tool, to an all-free paradise, and ended being a malignant narcissist pubescent monster. We go from the utopian libertarian and equality expectations and dreams of the web 1.0 to the dystopian reality in which everything is for sale, our soul included, and supranational corporations make money out of us but sell us fairy-flossed lies.
Keen highlights the hypocrisy of the Silicon Valley's elite and gurus who preach and sell a revolution, freedom, the power of the commons to create a different world, the value of failure to succeed, openness and transparency, and that they are the anti-establishment. However, de facto, they act as a mutant nastier version of the old rusty capitalists who made their fortunes after the first Industrial Revolution; they make the old capitalists look like the Sisters of Mercy; despite what the new gurus say, they have created opaque, non-egalitarian secretive organisations and groups of power and world domination that disregard governments, get your data without permission and sell it to the best bidder, do not pay or evade taxes, give a dam about work relations or exploitation, disregard the welfare of Society and of their workers, and act worse than the old establishment rich people did. These corporations are ran by white Western sexist males.
The example of what San Francisco has become since the Valley and the Bay were "Siliconed" it is exemplary enough: increased social differences, poorer work conditions and salaries, a ridiculously inflated house market, higher number of homeless people, and the big Internet companies creating a sort of segregated bubble that feeds on their own lies and purpose-created clichés and look at real people as if they did not get the world. What the contrary is true.
The Internet companies are as hostile to trade unions, taxation and regulation as Rockefeller, Morgan or Carnegie, but these new titans employ less people. have higher margins and are less harassed by governments than their predecessors.
Sometimes simple items of information work better than lengthy pages. Here some interesting ones:
> General Motors has a market cap of around 55 billion and employs 200.00+ people to manufacture cars in its factories. Google is seven times larger than GM but employs less than a quarter of the number of workers, is not creating many jobs and avoids paying taxes in some of the most developed countries in the world.
> Uber has received a quarter-billion dollar investment from Google Ventures.
> Tumblr has 300 million users and just 178 employees and was sold for 1.1. billion bucks in 2013.
> WhatsApp employs 55 people and sells for 19 billion.
> Instagram has just 13 full-time employees while Kodak had 13 factories, 130 photo labs and about 47,000 workers. However, people in sharing sites like Instagram don't own their own photos and their Terms & Conditions allow Instagram a perpetual use of your photos and the right to license them to any third party without your permission or knowing.
> The Internet has created a surreal economy in which we are not only the creator of the networked product, but also the product itself, therefore, the "free" stuff we get from these companies is not really free.
Keen explicitly says that he doesn't deny the value of the Internet or how our lives have changed and the benefits we get from it, (I mean, that would be stupid) but he focuses on the damage that the Economy of Internet Corporations is creating outside the web.
Chapter 7 "Crystal Man" in perhaps my favourite chapter. Keen compares the ways in which the Eastern Germany's Stasi (the Secret Police and its mastermind Erich Mielk) organised the spying and profiling of the citizens of the country with Google and Facebook, among others, which are doing the same but a global scale and with more precision. We are being profiled through our use of the Internet in ways that are terrifying, mostly because this is done without our consent and knowledge, or that of our governments at times, and we are being sold, literally, to whomever wants us. Internet Data Collection Companies (Indigogo, Kickstarted, Acxiom, and Palanquir among others) and their mere existence is just a bit scary if you are a normal citizen with no criminal mind and a normal average life and family, and that life is sold by somebody who is not you.
I agree with Keen's observations and reflections on the narcissist culture that the Internet has exacerbated. Yes, narcissism is not new, but the worrying part is that it has become the new way of being, the new "normal". Like Keen, I hate the obsession with the selfie, the spread of crappola, the mob in social networks, the hyper-obsession with the me and the now, Zuckeberg's idiotic discourse and "necromantic" Facebook; the use of social media by sexist, racist, and terrorist people without that filth being pulped down by anybody; I dislike most social networks out there (I've used most of them and quit them in the blink of an eye). I'm personally worried about a society that is every day more "Googled" and the fact that I rely more than I would like on a Google calendar, a Google blog, a Google phone and a Google tablet. Yet, I love the web.
What Keen describes for us is upsetting and seems not to be heading anywhere good for us, the commoners, the data-producers, the pawns.
I was looking forward to the conclusion and Keen's answer to the gloomy panorama he presents us with. Keen supports the intervention and regulation by individual states and supranational institutions to put a limit to the Internet Masters and force them to pay taxes, to respect anti-trust policies, and not to profile citizens without the consent of their country of origin. I love the idea of a Magna Carta of the Web with Internet rights and duties that protects the web's neutrality against governments and Internet corporations. Yes, it would be great breaking down Google, Apple, Facebook and other big Internet companies by creating legislation against plutocrats. Keen is keen on the elimination of Piracy and Peer-to-Peer as well. I am not that optimistic, though, the corruption of politicians and the political system in most Western countries is nothing I rely on; many of our politicians are corrupt to the bone and love being part of the plutocracy and give a dam about us all.
Yet, what resonates the most with me is "take responsibility for your online actions" because it is something that I believe in and practice. I deeply believe that we have the tools to change anything, and the tools are our own behaviour and actions. No magic formulas. Thus, is up to us to become a mob or not in the Internet, to allow ourselves to be seduced and abducted by the need to be cool and liked to feel better about ourselves. It is up to us to stop the big companies using our data by simply not being in sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Yelp or any big corporation. And if we stay, we keep alert about manipulative actions of the site, and do our best to keep our privacy levels high. The way we use our credit card, the way we (don't) use our name not even in our email unpaid address, the browser and adds-on we choose, are little things we can do to hide a bit from Big Brother. There are gazillion things we can do with a click that cost nothing and offer relief and protection. Yet, the Internet has created a monster because the mob wants a monster they are happy to feed.
There are many things I don't agree with Keen, which justify the polarised reviews this book is getting. Beyond some dialectic strawmen he uses at times, I would like to comment on a few things.
The book reads quite often as an endless series of quotes by other people. Keen is a good writer, so it is difficult to understand why the need to quote ad nauseam. Why not saying what he thinks in his own words and quoting when it is necessary or the quote is really relevant? Aren't editors supposed to control this sort of thing?
Keen's narrative is like one of those mini-me on each shoulder, one is a devil the other an angel. However, the voice of the devil is louder in this book, even though Keen explicitly play devil's advocate with his own approach. Yet, this voice is not as strong. This produces an unbalanced discourse that it is easy to be attacked as biased.
> Uber has received a quarter-billion dollar investment from Google Ventures.
> Tumblr has 300 million users and just 178 employees and was sold for 1.1. billion bucks in 2013.
> WhatsApp employs 55 people and sells for 19 billion.
> Instagram has just 13 full-time employees while Kodak had 13 factories, 130 photo labs and about 47,000 workers. However, people in sharing sites like Instagram don't own their own photos and their Terms & Conditions allow Instagram a perpetual use of your photos and the right to license them to any third party without your permission or knowing.
> The Internet has created a surreal economy in which we are not only the creator of the networked product, but also the product itself, therefore, the "free" stuff we get from these companies is not really free.
Keen explicitly says that he doesn't deny the value of the Internet or how our lives have changed and the benefits we get from it, (I mean, that would be stupid) but he focuses on the damage that the Economy of Internet Corporations is creating outside the web.
Chapter 7 "Crystal Man" in perhaps my favourite chapter. Keen compares the ways in which the Eastern Germany's Stasi (the Secret Police and its mastermind Erich Mielk) organised the spying and profiling of the citizens of the country with Google and Facebook, among others, which are doing the same but a global scale and with more precision. We are being profiled through our use of the Internet in ways that are terrifying, mostly because this is done without our consent and knowledge, or that of our governments at times, and we are being sold, literally, to whomever wants us. Internet Data Collection Companies (Indigogo, Kickstarted, Acxiom, and Palanquir among others) and their mere existence is just a bit scary if you are a normal citizen with no criminal mind and a normal average life and family, and that life is sold by somebody who is not you.
I agree with Keen's observations and reflections on the narcissist culture that the Internet has exacerbated. Yes, narcissism is not new, but the worrying part is that it has become the new way of being, the new "normal". Like Keen, I hate the obsession with the selfie, the spread of crappola, the mob in social networks, the hyper-obsession with the me and the now, Zuckeberg's idiotic discourse and "necromantic" Facebook; the use of social media by sexist, racist, and terrorist people without that filth being pulped down by anybody; I dislike most social networks out there (I've used most of them and quit them in the blink of an eye). I'm personally worried about a society that is every day more "Googled" and the fact that I rely more than I would like on a Google calendar, a Google blog, a Google phone and a Google tablet. Yet, I love the web.
What Keen describes for us is upsetting and seems not to be heading anywhere good for us, the commoners, the data-producers, the pawns.
I was looking forward to the conclusion and Keen's answer to the gloomy panorama he presents us with. Keen supports the intervention and regulation by individual states and supranational institutions to put a limit to the Internet Masters and force them to pay taxes, to respect anti-trust policies, and not to profile citizens without the consent of their country of origin. I love the idea of a Magna Carta of the Web with Internet rights and duties that protects the web's neutrality against governments and Internet corporations. Yes, it would be great breaking down Google, Apple, Facebook and other big Internet companies by creating legislation against plutocrats. Keen is keen on the elimination of Piracy and Peer-to-Peer as well. I am not that optimistic, though, the corruption of politicians and the political system in most Western countries is nothing I rely on; many of our politicians are corrupt to the bone and love being part of the plutocracy and give a dam about us all.
Yet, what resonates the most with me is "take responsibility for your online actions" because it is something that I believe in and practice. I deeply believe that we have the tools to change anything, and the tools are our own behaviour and actions. No magic formulas. Thus, is up to us to become a mob or not in the Internet, to allow ourselves to be seduced and abducted by the need to be cool and liked to feel better about ourselves. It is up to us to stop the big companies using our data by simply not being in sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Yelp or any big corporation. And if we stay, we keep alert about manipulative actions of the site, and do our best to keep our privacy levels high. The way we use our credit card, the way we (don't) use our name not even in our email unpaid address, the browser and adds-on we choose, are little things we can do to hide a bit from Big Brother. There are gazillion things we can do with a click that cost nothing and offer relief and protection. Yet, the Internet has created a monster because the mob wants a monster they are happy to feed.
***
THE BUTS...There are many things I don't agree with Keen, which justify the polarised reviews this book is getting. Beyond some dialectic strawmen he uses at times, I would like to comment on a few things.
The book reads quite often as an endless series of quotes by other people. Keen is a good writer, so it is difficult to understand why the need to quote ad nauseam. Why not saying what he thinks in his own words and quoting when it is necessary or the quote is really relevant? Aren't editors supposed to control this sort of thing?
Keen's narrative is like one of those mini-me on each shoulder, one is a devil the other an angel. However, the voice of the devil is louder in this book, even though Keen explicitly play devil's advocate with his own approach. Yet, this voice is not as strong. This produces an unbalanced discourse that it is easy to be attacked as biased.
I don't like the tone Keen uses at times when he speaks of some of the Silicon golden boys because it rests power to his discourse. I mean, they behave in disgusting ways, OK, I get it, but I suppose that Keen is not the only Silicon boy with a bit of decency, right? And truly, if he despises these people so much, why does he hang out with them? Talk to them? Go to conventions in which he does not belong and he abhor? Why does he slash Amazon and Jeff Bezos and then go and sells his book in Amazon?
Many of the things Keen complains about the Economy of the Internet are actually pre-Internet and, even today, year 2015, not linked to the Economy of Internet at all. It is called savage capitalism and unfair competition and monopoly practices. To this very day big supermarket chains are pushing small supermarkets out of business with dirty tactics that have nothing to do with the Internet. Huge book stores forced decades ago the closing down of hundreds of small book stores even before the web 2.0 was invented.
Yes, the Silicon boys are despicable, they preach one thing and they have super mansions with private beaches closed to the public. Well, you have celebrities and movie stars, whose contribution to Society has been zero, doing the same, or buying whole islands and nobody is complaining.
Many of the things Keen complains about the Economy of the Internet are actually pre-Internet and, even today, year 2015, not linked to the Economy of Internet at all. It is called savage capitalism and unfair competition and monopoly practices. To this very day big supermarket chains are pushing small supermarkets out of business with dirty tactics that have nothing to do with the Internet. Huge book stores forced decades ago the closing down of hundreds of small book stores even before the web 2.0 was invented.
Yes, the Silicon boys are despicable, they preach one thing and they have super mansions with private beaches closed to the public. Well, you have celebrities and movie stars, whose contribution to Society has been zero, doing the same, or buying whole islands and nobody is complaining.
Yes, it is true that the current web system does not spread good information or good news and is actually misinforming. Yet, before the arrival of the Internet 2.0 TV stations
like CNN (where Keen is a contributor) have been unashamedly manipulating international
news for the mobs for years. British and Australian newspapers managed and operated by off-line professional journalists regularly spread racist and culturally imperialistic views of the world with a constant vilification of the Mediterranean and its people as a whole selling patent lies to any people who knows some of those countries. And no, I am not talking about Greece.
Keen's view and use of creative disruption is infused in negativity most of the time. The French Revolution was disrupting and bloody and still changed History for good. The invention of the steam machine and the Industrial Revolution created similar gloomy forecasts about humanity, the environment, mechanisation, the destruction of traditional jobs and other issues. Sometimes disruption is needed to get to better places in life, and is not done the rosey way. Other ways disruption is just destruction. Keen's discourse is unbalanced because he does push the negative button too often. Perhaps a simply rephrasing of many of the things he says would have conveyed his message better and more fairly.
Keen has a sort of romantic vision of what the middle classes and society were in the 50s and 60s. It might be so in the UK and the US. My parents lived the 50s surrounded by misery, hard working conditions, poor salaries and a very hard life.
Keen has a sort of romantic vision of what the middle classes and society were in the 50s and 60s. It might be so in the UK and the US. My parents lived the 50s surrounded by misery, hard working conditions, poor salaries and a very hard life.
Regarding the kingdom of the amateur is nothing new, just a exacerbation of things. Why is this kingdom spreading so easily? My answer is because people want to be cool, want to get fame, want to get money with the least possible effort and personal investment. People don't want to be the best in their job, they want to be the best paid, the most popular, the most liked, the most featured, the one in power. People aren't happy being themselves, they want to be more than they are, and they create a life full of lies to fool themselves; not only that, they will do anything and everything to obscure and destroy those who shine without the need of a flash. Have you even met a moron or an ignoramus giving lessons? There you have the new model. That was not born with the Internet. Yet, to balance my own discourse, I have seen amateur artistic photographers and artists on Flickr who were better than many professionals. Some people selling on Etsy sell handmade wonderful stuff at a fraction of the price even some of them are not professionals. Not everything is monochrome.
I don't agree with Keen on Piracy and Peer-to-Peer being the same, Pirate Bay is one thing, sharing music or movies with my best pal for free another thing. Also, Keen does not scratches the surface on the main question. Why do people download pirated material? Keen replies to it easily, because piracy material is easy to find and not enough is being done to avoid this. Yet, is that the only reason? Are all people downloading for the same reasons? I wonder how people without a job, people who have difficulties making ends meet, or students living on the verge of poverty do to go to the cinema (or pay a paid TV channel) and buy hard copy music regularly. Libraries allow customers who pay nothing to get books, CDS and DVS, and that is legal. People love going to the cinema, I don't know anybody who does not, why don't they go more often? Are the prices demanded by multinational record companies really fair and benefit the artists as much as they deserve? How much is too much for a CD or DVD and why? There is lots to scratch here before getting my itch comforted.
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A NOTE ON THE BOOK COVERIs there any need to have a dreadful cover for both hard-copy and Kindle? Is plain ugly the new creative?
Update
The cover of the Kindle Edition has been changed since I wrote this review in Amazon to something decent, but not great yet =)
IN SHORT
A great book to munch on, with a bit of crappolina. Read it with care, though.
Update2
I got this video in my Mozilla's front page Funny. It summarises well many of the issues discussed in this book
We are all for sale
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