Book Review
Title: The Internet Ideology: From A as in Advertising to Z as in Zipcar
Author: Massimo Moruzzi
Genre: Non-Fiction
Rating: ***
Review: I have reviewed a few other titles by this author before and found them to be informative so I was delighted to get the chance to read more from this author. The introduction as the first two chapters; Advertising and Apps, introduces us to the idea that the internet is one of the great inventions and challenges to see whether or not this is two. Advertising gives a quick run over how almost everything on the internet is backed by advertising and therefore we are being targeted to act and think in a certain way, Apps continues this as it explains there is an app for almost everything today which ties us to our devices and force feeds us information rather than letting us figure it out for ourselves.
Big Data questions whether or not it is right for companies to be data farming and collection so much personal data on internet users and the answer is my opinion is always no but it seems in our modern world we can’t survive without giving away the most vital parts of ourselves. Bob was the first chapter I didn’t really get as it talks about American history specifically the assassination of key political players like JFK, Malcom X and Martian Luther King. Cloud comes back to the idea of the internet with the Cloud, which briefly points out that the Cloud is a way for us to be spied on constantly and we allow it never asking whether or not this is the future which want. It is also a future that George Orwell predicts in 1984. Crowd was interesting for me as it shows that the internet has taken old-fashioned protesting and the generation of ideas and put them behind a screen making them less impactful despite the fact new voices are always emerging, it also gives rise to the implementation of censorship which is something we should be fighting against.
Democracy raises some interesting ideas on whether or not the internet is spreading or supressing democracy, however, I didn’t agree with the author’s views on Trump, despite living in the UK not the US I am pro-Trump, so having the author’s blatant political views in the book was a little off-putting. Disruption I had mixed feelings on, I did agree that the internet runs disruption and interference in other areas of society especially in the freedom of information and speech but I didn’t agree that it is the key problem that needs to be dealt with. Ecommerce I completely agree with, in that online shopping is killing the shopping industry especially for our high streets which is why I rarely shop online unless I can’t get something in my country. The only thing I tend to buy online are book which are printing in other languages, like my Japanese editions of the Harry Potter series which you can’t get in the UK at all. Extraction presents the idea that we are being exploited in order to fund things like Big Oil, which I agree with in part but like other areas I don’t think this is solely to blame.
Failure was another chapter that I didn’t really get and it is probably because I am not as informed as the author is on what is going on in the world. I tend to live by the philosophy that if it doesn’t affect me or my life directly I don’t really care and this may be the wrong attitude to take with the current state of the world but it doesn’t save me many headaches and stress. Gamification talks about how many things are becoming games in order to brainwash people into a desired set of behaviours and again I agree in part. Hippies was one chapter I couldn’t identify with because of my age. I wasn’t around in the 60’s and 70’s when the era of free love was at its height so I don’t really understand the impact it had on our modern society. Ideology literally talks about how the meaning of ideology has changed over the centuries and what it means for us today. Internet of Things returns to the idea we are being spied on and our data is being collected for just about everything and I do agree with the quote from Bruce Sterling: "all-purpose electronic automation through digital surveillance by wireless broadband" which is something we are all facing right now.
Invisible Hand was internet as I have seen this effect for myself. The invisible hand governs what information is and isn’t free and this is a political decision. For example, if you search for something on Google some results are omitted with you being informed but you can find them on less well known browsers like DuckDuckGo. Jefferson relates the idea of hidden information in the form of Thomas Jefferson, while he was praised for being land from France and distributing it, it isn’t mentioned that he himself owned 5000 acres of land and 200 slaves showing the duality of our technological age. Long Tail is a term used to describe an economic model like those of Amazon and Netflix, in which revenues coming from selling only a few units of millions of niche products are supposedly as important as blockbuster revenues and this can be seen in various industries. For example, in the publishing industry 96% of books sales only come from 4% of authors, meaning that the huge authors of this world, Sarah J Maas, Cassandra Clare, think along those lines that up a disproportional percentage of the revenue leaving smaller indie author who write amazing books with nothing to gain for it.
LSD was a chapter I didn’t understand and I don’t have much to say on it, I think if it was explained a little more I might be able to grasp what it was trying to say and I had a similar problem with Manifest Destiny. Monopolies was really interesting for me, monopolies on any given market are illegal and it is written in law that there needs to be at least 2 companies in a given market. However, when you look at companies like Google or Amazon which have wiped away all their competitors and own a massive percentage of the market it is a monopoly but since they don’t charge for you to use their services it isn’t a monopoly, and it presents a very interesting problem to be dealt with. Moore’s Law is something I understood from a science perspective but I didn’t really get how it applied to the problems the author was contributing it to. Open Data was something that really spoke to the ideologies I have. It mentions who is interested in transparency of data and who benefits from it. For example, Barrack Obama made a lot of information available but waged war on true information freedom activists like Julian Assange, so can you say he was really interested in transparency and what was he tried to hide. Open Web follows the themes on from Open Data and shows how certain platforms that were open were shut down yet enclosed platforms in social media have become huge when they monitor everything you do, say and think.
Privacy talks about how the meaning of privacy has changed before it was a right everyone was entitled to whereas today wanting privacy means that you have something to hide and should be watched or investigated. Revolution talks about the concept of revolution has all but been eliminated from our modern society since it is near impossible to complete separate yourself from the technology all around as it rules our lives. “The digital revolution has created perhaps the greatest concentration of power and wealth that the world has ever seen” and I completely agree with this. Sharing Economy explains how the concept of sharing has been warped, before technology it was altruistic and simple, for example, Airbnb was started by 2 students who just wanted to offer a bed to people to participants of a design convention in New York but it has been warped so that certain cities like Paris are so full of tourists seeking the “real” experience of those place that they cease to exist. Smart Cities expresses the idea that smart cities are further taking away information belonging to citizens and giving it to the big corporations that are funding the projects, further reducing us from humans and individuals to mere objects for a transaction.
Television talks about how the internet was initially planning to overtake both newspapers and TV in the role of giving information to the people and it failed. While the internet has beaten newspapers for many things, TV is still going strong and has even adapted to this new age and remains one of the only competitors to the internet, but how long this will last is a different question all together. Zipcar uses car sharing as a way of looking at some deeper problems but it didn’t really have the impact it was trying to have in my opinion. Overall, The Internet Ideology was an interesting read, there were parts I completely agreed with and there were others that I didn’t. If you are interested in the age of technology and how the internet is taking over our lives then this might be the book for you. For me personally it was an interesting read but didn’t leave any lasting impact on me.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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