In his new book, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, Evgeny Morozov aims to prick the bubble of hyper-optimism that surrounds debates about the Internet’s role in advancing human freedom or civic causes. Morozov, a native of Belarus, is a tremendously gifted young cyber-policy scholar affiliated with Stanford University and the New America Foundation. He’s an expert on the interaction of digital technology and democracy and writes frequently on that topic for a variety of respected media outlets.
In Net Delusion, as with many of his previous columns and essays, Morozov positions himself the ultimate Net “realist,” aiming to bring a dose of realpolitik to discussions about how much of a difference the Net and digital technologies make to advancing democracy and freedom. His depressing answer: Not much. Indeed, Morozov’s book is one big wet blanket on the theory that “technologies of freedom” can help liberate humanity from the yoke of repressive government.
Morozov clearly relishes his skunk at the garden party role, missing few opportunities to belittle those who subscribe to such theories. If you’re one of those who tinted your Twitter avatar green as an expression of solidarity with Iranian “Green Movement” dissidents, Morozov’s view is that, at best, you’re wasting your time and, at worst, you’re aiding and abetting tyrants by engaging in a form of “slacktivism” that has little hope of advancing real regime change. The portrait he paints of technology and democracy is a dismal one in which cyber-utopian ideals of information as liberator are not just rejected but inverted. He regards such “cyber-utopian” dreams as counter-productive, even dangerous, to the advance of democracy and human freedom. Continue reading →
On this week’s podcast Evgeny Morozov, a visiting scholar at Stanford University, a fellow at the New America Foundation, and a contributor to Foreign Policy, the Boston Review, and the Wall Street Journal, talks about his new book, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. Morozov first discusses misperceptions about the effectiveness of American broadcasts and pamphlets to promote democracy and liberty during the Cold War. He then suggests consequences of bringing such historical baggage to internet policymaking, pointing out that many people today have faulty assumptions about the power of internet freedom to effect change in places like China, Russia, and Iran.
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In my previous post on the FCC’s Open Internet Report and Order, I looked at the weak justification given for the new rules the Commission approved on Dec. 21, 2010
In this post, an aside on the likely costs of the rules, and in particular the costs of enforcement.
Last week was the 100th birthday of Nobel prize-winning economist Ronald Coase, a remarkable man I have had the great fortune to know personally. Among his many contributions to the field, Coase has always advocated for more empirical research and other data collection to help lead the field out of its theoretical quagmire. To that end, Coase co-founded the International Society for New Institutional Economics, and served as its first President in 1996.
Unfortunately, the FCC, which owes a great debt to Coase for his early championing of auctions for radio spectrum, does not seem to have learned much else from his work. In a section optimistically captioned, “The Benefits of Protecting the Internet’s Openness Exceed the Costs” (¶¶ 38-42), the Commission makes no effort to calculate either with any hint of rigor. Wishing away serious economic analysis, the Report simply states that “By comparison to the benefits of these prophylactic measures, the costs associated with the open Internet rules adopted here are likely small.”
Continue reading →
Well, even though I just recently put to bed my annual list of the “Most Important Info-Tech Policy Books of 2010,” I’ve already started investigating what new titles we’ll need to pay attention to in 2011. Accordingly, I’ve started this list and hope that others can suggest other books I may have missed. Here’s what I’ve got so far:
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.