Evgeny Morozov
5.0 out of 5 stars Intellectual Recycling and Internet-Centrism, a tale of Cyber-Utopia Gone Really Wrong, November 30, 2012
Abhinav Agarwal (Bangalore, India)
Dunks a much needed, well-reasoned, and well-researched bucket of cold-water over “Internet-centrists” and “cyber-utopians” (cyber-utopianism is a “naïve belief in the emancipatory nature of online communication”), and assembles together an excellent though somewhat depressing array of evidence to dismantle this edifice of technology-centrists.The Internet has revolutionized communications. It has certainly disintermediated and caused immense pain to traditional brick-and-mortar retailers as well as traditional media outlets and the newspaper business. But when people make a leap of logic and start assuming that the Internet has, can, should, and will engender socio-political revolutions in totalitarian, closed, dictatorial regimes, you have to start thinking that maybe there has been an ingestion of Kool Aid, gallons of it.
While the basic thrust of the book is to argue, strongly, against making technology, and especially the Internet and social media, the main focus of an argument in favor of sociological and political change in societies, the argument itself is mutli-faceted.
Continue reading “Review (Guest): The Net Delusion – The Dark Side of Internet Freedom”
