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angelinazahajko's review
4.0
Non-fiction books are always harder for me to get into, so I already have a natural bias; however, I was pleasantly surprised with the amount of voice and expression that Deibert brought to his equally exciting content matter. While the final chapter did drag, his lectures were insightful, fear-inducing in the best way, and extremely well-written. Coming away from this book, you truly feel like you have a new outlook on the operations of our world. I would recommend this book to everyone: not only is it a great read, but the horror stories will significantly decrease your screen time.
jfrackson's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Very informative, expansive in its per-lecture approaches (ethics to ecology), easy writing style to get into
thesummer's review
3.0
I feel like maybe the entire book would be interesting for
a) boomers who don't fully understand technology
b) people who don't take an active interest in discourse around problems with big tech and the public policy debate about how to address it
But as a millennial who does take an active-enough interest in problems with big tech and the public policy debate about how to address it, I would say that chapters 1-4 were pretty boring. They can basically be summarized as follows:
1. "did you know your phone and social media tracks everything you do, and that information is sold to companies?"
2. there is a discussion on how algorithms exploit cognitive biases that is worth reading if you have not already done reading about that kind of thing (ie extremism rabbit holes that social media algorithms cause), but if you take an active interest in tech problems then this should come as no surprise
3. "did you know that authoritarian regimes use technology to maintain control and abuse human rights"
Just like any other tool, technology can be used to control, oppress, etc. This is no surprise.
4. tying tech to ecology. If you've already read about environmental degradation from mining and watched some documentaries on electronics waste then you can skip this.
If you're me, you already knew about these things, or at least had a fairly good idea of them. Even if you are not a millennial, you probably did not need as many examples as were presented in chapters 1-4. The editing could have cut out at least half of it. But I understand that this is a CBC Massey Lecture and not an essay and thus is expected to be more rambly.
My recommendation: skip to the final chapter 5. Even that could have been edited down in some parts, but generally, provides two things I enjoyed:
- Some political theory vibes about frameworks for grounding future policy around technology. Deliberately slowing things down as a way to improve democracy à la Republicanism and Daniel Kahneman. The intro had touched on Innis etc and I kind of wish Deibert had gone more into it. But that's a personal preference because I like that sort of more abstract/foundational political theory and didn't get enough of it in school.
- The consolidated list of concrete policies we can take. Really liked this and would have liked to see it expanded. Had a lot of stuff in it that I'd read about or thought about previously, but tied them together with the framework and in relation to each other very well.
I agreed with most of the things proposed in chapter 5, but would like to pick a bone with:
- Deibert's claim that international is not the way to go with regulations. Like hello, tech is by its very nature borderless. That's why the climate change metaphors worked so well. And while it's true that many international bodies are limited nowadays, and while I do see a worrying trend with international agreements where you dial back regulations to the most watered down version that everyone agrees on, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't push for regulation on an international stage in addition to stronger ones domestically.
- Deibert's writing off of media literacy. I think this media literacy absolutely central. Teach it in schools, but also teach it to adults. Spend a lot of time on it. Critical thinking too. We can spend lots of resources and money moderating online content but at the end of the day, the human brain is the best filter. Media literacy should be worked on until people are able to filter information from media quickly and effortlessly. I did really like his civic virtue education pitch too; I think it goes hand in hand with media literacy education.
Overall: a good book, but expect that it was written by a boomer for boomers, as it were. There are some pretty cringey instances of "the dictionary definition of [X tech word] is..." that almost made me throw the book into a fire, but I'm glad I didn't, because I did quite enjoy the last chapter.
a) boomers who don't fully understand technology
b) people who don't take an active interest in discourse around problems with big tech and the public policy debate about how to address it
But as a millennial who does take an active-enough interest in problems with big tech and the public policy debate about how to address it, I would say that chapters 1-4 were pretty boring. They can basically be summarized as follows:
1. "did you know your phone and social media tracks everything you do, and that information is sold to companies?"
2. there is a discussion on how algorithms exploit cognitive biases that is worth reading if you have not already done reading about that kind of thing (ie extremism rabbit holes that social media algorithms cause), but if you take an active interest in tech problems then this should come as no surprise
3. "did you know that authoritarian regimes use technology to maintain control and abuse human rights"
Just like any other tool, technology can be used to control, oppress, etc. This is no surprise.
4. tying tech to ecology. If you've already read about environmental degradation from mining and watched some documentaries on electronics waste then you can skip this.
If you're me, you already knew about these things, or at least had a fairly good idea of them. Even if you are not a millennial, you probably did not need as many examples as were presented in chapters 1-4. The editing could have cut out at least half of it. But I understand that this is a CBC Massey Lecture and not an essay and thus is expected to be more rambly.
My recommendation: skip to the final chapter 5. Even that could have been edited down in some parts, but generally, provides two things I enjoyed:
- Some political theory vibes about frameworks for grounding future policy around technology. Deliberately slowing things down as a way to improve democracy à la Republicanism and Daniel Kahneman. The intro had touched on Innis etc and I kind of wish Deibert had gone more into it. But that's a personal preference because I like that sort of more abstract/foundational political theory and didn't get enough of it in school.
- The consolidated list of concrete policies we can take. Really liked this and would have liked to see it expanded. Had a lot of stuff in it that I'd read about or thought about previously, but tied them together with the framework and in relation to each other very well.
I agreed with most of the things proposed in chapter 5, but would like to pick a bone with:
- Deibert's claim that international is not the way to go with regulations. Like hello, tech is by its very nature borderless. That's why the climate change metaphors worked so well. And while it's true that many international bodies are limited nowadays, and while I do see a worrying trend with international agreements where you dial back regulations to the most watered down version that everyone agrees on, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't push for regulation on an international stage in addition to stronger ones domestically.
- Deibert's writing off of media literacy. I think this media literacy absolutely central. Teach it in schools, but also teach it to adults. Spend a lot of time on it. Critical thinking too. We can spend lots of resources and money moderating online content but at the end of the day, the human brain is the best filter. Media literacy should be worked on until people are able to filter information from media quickly and effortlessly. I did really like his civic virtue education pitch too; I think it goes hand in hand with media literacy education.
Overall: a good book, but expect that it was written by a boomer for boomers, as it were. There are some pretty cringey instances of "the dictionary definition of [X tech word] is..." that almost made me throw the book into a fire, but I'm glad I didn't, because I did quite enjoy the last chapter.
martijn_grooten's review against another edition
The second book by Mr Citizen Lab on all the bad things happening on the Internet, in particular those bad things committed by powerful actors, and their impact on civil society. The sort of stuff I follow because of a professional and personal interest, but it's a good book to have read as a reference.