THE NET DELUSION
Evgeny Morozov
Allen Lane
REVIEW: Karen Jeynes
It might have been the remarkable coincidence of reading The Net Delusion while watching events in Japan and Libya unfold on Twitter.
It might be the simple, powerful, authoritative tone with which Morozov states his case. But every so often a book comes along which challenges your assumptions and alters, ever so slightly, your perspective on the world. The Net Delusion is such a book.
With chapter titles like Censors and Sensibilities and Orwell’s Favorite Lolcat, Morozov uses the lexicon of social media culture in an exposé of its own flaws and weaknesses.
More than anything, he is countering the whimsically optimistic beliefs of what he terms “cyberutopians” that the internet “shall set us free”.
Instead, Morozov argues convincingly that the internet is as likely, if not more so, to be used to control us, oppress us, and that terrorists and dictators are just as able to use online technologies as revolutionaries.
In between my reading, I am inundated with Twitter debates – is it right to make jokes about tsunamis? Follow this person tweeting from Libya; #prayforjapan.
And it seems evident to me that social media makes it far too easy for nice polite liberals to click a link or add a hashtag and believe that they have “done something”.
It feeds our instant society’s need for an immediate action, but does it, in fact, deter us from taking the bigger, scarier actions?
I begin to follow Morozov on Twitter. I read his thoughts and links as I continue the book. In his discussion of the consequences of internet freedom – echoing the lessons we were taught at school, that with rights come responsibilities – Morozov talks about the rise of nationalism, and national stereotyping.
He quotes Negroponte’s prediction of 1995 that “(on the internet), there will be no more room for nationalism than there is for smallpox”, and juxtaposes it with instances of nationalist uprisings, the meme of the Nigerian scammer, and the differing interests and policies of different countries regarding internet freedom.
Morozov is not denouncing the internet, merely urging caution in our expectations of it. Morozov would like us to be cyber-realists – to acknowledge the good and bad that the internet brings us. Google is not a great liberator, it is a large company.
Technology is neutral, and whoever is most persistent and powerful in using it will have their way.
Like any tool you want to wield, use it with realistic expectations.
The tweets continue to flash past, as more and more raw information is presented to me. YouTube clips, photos, soundbytes of horror.
Quietly, I look for the expert opinions in it all, try and filter out the noise, and tune into the signal I choose. In the end, we are all responsible for how we click.
“Above all, cyber-realists would believe that a world made of bytes may defy the law of gravity, but absolutely nothing dictates that it should also defy the law of reason,” says Morozov.