Released: 19th November 2015
Genre: Non-Fiction, Technology
Number of Pages: 288
In the digital age, we’ve grown very accustomed to having the internet, wireless connections and regular access on an everyday basis. It’s an essential part of countless lives, with millions of users logging in every day. But when technology goes wrong, where does that leave human society? This is the central question behind Andrew Keen’s “The Internet is not the Answer”.
Keen examines many areas across eight chapters; highlighting the rise of the all-encompassing tech corporations, the culture of Silicon Valley and its subsequent demolishing of previously strong industries. Each section is grounded with the history of the web itself, its creation in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee and rise to prominence through the nineties. Keen himself is also a regular participant in the world of tech, having attended several events as well as a director of salonFutureCast in Silicon Valley. The most sobering aspect of the book for me was a case study into Kodak, who were essentially crushed by the onset of smartphones and the reduction in digital camera purchases around the world. The company’s decline threw the entire town of Rochester, New York and the population’s livelihoods under the bus, turning it into a run-down settlement not too dissimilar from dystopian fiction. More than anything else, Keen emphasises that the biggest tech companies have no concern for those rendered obsolete and plough ahead with their incursions into data collection and enacting further control over the populous.
As the title suggests, Keen certainly doesn’t mince his words; the overarching message of the book is that while the internet has played a major role in increasing efficiency and pushing the cutting-edge forward, it has come at the cost of leaving many communities and honest working people behind and as you read through, you’ll begin to see why. The spiralling cycle of monopolisation, the rich getting richer, combined with the oncoming issue of automation is sure to have some drastically negative effects in the future and Andrew hammers this point home throughout the book. He sneers at the rich in their fancy, overpriced clubs while delivering dire warnings for everyone who reads the book, concluding that more government regulation and scrutiny is essential for keeping big tech in check.
Recommended?
YES: While it doesn’t make for easy reading, Andrew Keen’s reflections on the internet and the digital age make for some startling and often sinister implications. By making use of his personal experience and the rise and fall of trends in the now gargantuan tech industry, Keen delivers a very credible look into the way things have changed across the board in the 21st Century, something very relevant to today’s world. It’s only gap is that these musings are somewhat confined to industry and lack individual grounding to create a sense of relatability. How does it affect the individual on a psychological level?
In the years following its release, especially 2016 the internet has had a highly detrimental effect on political procedure and these impacts have the potential to cause even worse damage than everything Keen mentions. I would be interested to see a revised edition of the book with his thoughts on these events and what can be done about them.
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