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Veteran author and longtime Silicon Valley resident Andrew Keen has stepped up his criticisms of the Internet. Describing the net as a platform that has devolved from its initial ideals and promise into a vehicle of monopolistic, manipulative and exploitative practices, a Guardian article summarizes views now gaining traction. By using Amazon, Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber or any other online giant, are we striking a Faustian pact, behind which lays a mass of suffering, surveillance and ruthless harvesting?
Keen supports his arguments by mentioning that even online businesses that cite individual collaboration, those of the 'sharing' economy, are mere cynical fronts for firms already valued in the billions. As money has been sucked out of retail, transportation, photography, research and other industries into the coffers of new Internet giants, the net result has been losses of jobs and the compromise of working conditions. As for the Internet's much-touted 'individual empowerment', Keen counters with the rise of mob mentality - “Rather than creating more democracy, it’s empowering the rule of the mob. Rather than encouraging tolerance, it’s unleashed such a distasteful war on women that many no longer feel welcome on the network". Keen's book - The Internet is not the Answer - is, a touch ironically, available on Amazon.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday February 11 2015, @06:17AM
Instead, it has handed extraordinary power and wealth to a tiny handful of people, while simultaneously, for the rest of us, compounding and often aggravating existing inequalities – cultural, social and economic – whenever and wherever it has found them. Individually, it may work wonders for us. Collectively, it’s doing us no good at all. “It was supposed to be win-win,” Keen declares. “The network’s users were supposed to be its beneficiaries. But in a lot of ways, we are its victims.”
I think these basic premises are outright wrong. While I grant the internet has minted a new set of billionaires and given more power to entities like consumer tracking companies and intelligence agencies, it's not that useful for most existing wealth and power. Meanwhile the common man has access to more knowledge, trade, community, opportunities, entertainment, etc than they would have in the absence of the internet. For example, I can trade stocks online, play games with people from all over the world, look up any knowledge (it has to be remarkably obscure or provincial to not have a detailed presence somewhere on the internet), and trade all manner of things globally.
Part of the problem here, argues Keen, is that the digital economy is, by its nature, winner-takes-all. “There’s no inevitable or conspiratorial logic here; no one really knew it would happen,” he says. “There are just certain structural qualities that mean the internet lends itself to monopolies.
Except that's not actually true. Sure, there are some areas where persistent market dominance happens, but monopoly means no competition, not merely that there's someone with a lot of market share.
As for the Internet's much-touted 'individual empowerment', Keen counters with the rise of mob mentality - “Rather than creating more democracy, it’s empowering the rule of the mob. Rather than encouraging tolerance, it’s unleashed such a distasteful war on women that many no longer feel welcome on the network".
Democracy is mob rule. That's just the way it is whether or not the internet exists. For example, this was a problem in ancient Athens (at least according to Plato who complained bitterly about Athenian democracy and the resulting politics on numerous occasions). They didn't have internet back then.
And as to "encouraging tolerance", even if that should be a high priority (with which I don't agree), what makes him think it's not happening? Even using his example, women are far more empowered on the internet. People are far more exposed to alternative viewpoints. What more does he want? Pull out the magic pixie dust and make everyone love each other?
And can't he come up with a better or more serious example? It's starting to sound like he was a sore loser of GamerGate or some similar meaningless cultural skirmish. Too bad for him.
This sort of crap bugs me because it starts off from a position of delusion and can't go anywhere interesting as a result. It's a comfortable myth to claim what we do makes things worse. If that were true, then how did we manage to get to this point? Similarly, it's been fashionable at least since the time of Plato to mock the common man in the guise of helping. That hasn't been productive, but the game still goes on, two and a half millennia later.