I just finished Ken Auletta’s latest book, Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, and I highly recommend it. Auletta is an amazingly gifted journalist and knows how put together a hell of good story.  It helps in this case that he was granted unprecedented access to the Google team and their day-to-day workings at the Googleplex. I’m really shocked by the level of access he was granted to important meetings and officials–over 150 interviews with Googlers, including 11 with CEO Eric Schmidt and several with founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.  That’s impressive.

The book shares much in common with Randall Stross’s excellent Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know, which I reviewed here earlier this year.  Both books recount the history of Google from its early origins to present. And both survey a great deal of ground in terms of the challenges that Google faces as it matures and the policy issues that are relevant to the company (privacy, free speech, copyright law, etc).

What makes Auletta’s book unique is the way we taps his extensive “old media” world contacts and integrates such a diverse cast of characters into the narrative — Mel Karmazin (former Viacom, now Sirius XM), Bob Iger (Disney), Howard Stringer (Sony), Martin Sorrrell (WPP), Irwin Gotlieb (Group M), and even the Internet’s “inventor”–Al Gore!   Auletta interviews them or recounts stories about their interactions with Google to show the growing tensions being created by this disruptive company and its highly disruptive technologies.  There are some terrifically entertaining anecdotes in the book, but the bottom line is clear: Google has made a lot of enemies in a very short time.

Indeed, the book is as much about the decline of old media as it is about Google’s ascendancy.  What Auletta has done so brilliantly here is to tell their stories together and ask how much old media’s recent woes can be blamed on Google and digital disintermediation in general. “If Google is destroying or weakening old business models,” Auletta argues, “it is because the Internet inevitably destroys old ways of doing things, spurs ‘creative destruction.’ This does not mean that Google is not ambitious to grow, and will not grow at the expense of others. But the rewards, and the pain, are unavoidable,” he concludes. Google is essentially just the tip of a giant wave of digital disintermediation that is tearing through the media landscape, Auletta argues. But because it is the biggest and most visible part of this wave, it invites greater scrutiny and scorn.  And then there are more profound questions about Google and the digital disintermediators: “What we don’t know is whether the new digital distribution systems will generate sufficient revenue to adequately pay content providers.”  Auletta isn’t just talking about old media giants, but about content creators in general. It’s the “digital sharecropper” concern that Nick Carr has articulated in his book about cloud computing, The Big Switch. [reviewed here]  In the relentless pursuit of greater efficiencies, do digital disintermediators destroy the cross-subsidization methods that have traditionally funded the creation of news, information, and entertainment? If so, are we better off because older, “less efficient” ways of doing business are replaced with better ones. Or are we instead left with less high-quality journalism and entertainment because of funding streams are drying up or being siphoned off by the new digital disintermediators?

Those are heated question frequently debated by Internet optimists and pessimists. It’s a great debate, and one that will no doubt continue to rage for many years to come. The problem for Google — as the interviews Auletta conducts with others in the book makes clear — is that it will increasingly become the scapegoat for every problem under the digital sun. “To blame Google is to prescribe a cure from the wrong illness,” Auletta notes.  Nonetheless, as the biggest and most visible of the digital disruptors, it’s clear the company will have a target on its back for many years to come.

Worse yet for Google, Aulleta states, is that the company is “waking the government bear,” not just because of its growing size but also because of the sheer amount of information it collects and puts at the world’s disposal.  Privacy, child safety, defamation, and copyright are just a few of the concerns raised by Google’s mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”  Google has gone to great pains to address these concerns, but it’s unlikely to ever be enough to satisfy government officials, who will be fielding increasing complaints from disgruntled competitors and activist groups at the same time.

These concerns could play into the hands of those who think antitrust action against Google is needed. Indeed, I fear that’s on the way given the myopia of Washington. As I pointed out in my lengthy review of Gary Reback’s ode to antitrust regulation, Free the Market: Why Only Government Can Keep the Marketplace Competitive, the static competition, fixed-pie mindset that rules Washington leads many to support antitrust crusades against the tech giants of the day.  In the 70s it was IBM. In the 90s it was Microsoft.  In the next decade it will likely be Google.

“Today, Google appears impregnable,” Auletta notes, “But a decade ago so did AOL, and so did the combination of AOL Time Warner.”  Indeed, I have written extensively about that deal and many others that critics predicted would bring on a techno-apocalypse.  Of course, we know how the story ended in those cases. Markets and technologies evolved while the old giants rested on their laurels. Dynamic competition and innovation are the rule; the static mindset crowd that pretends today’s giants are the end of the story just don’t have history on their side.

But that doesn’t mean Google will be able to avoid a massive regulatory onslaught. In fact, I have pending bets going right now with several friends that, before the Obama Administration leaves office, it will launch the biggest, most costly antitrust jihad in U.S. history against Google.  I can’t tell you how much I am hoping to lose those bets.

P.S. I have enjoyed many of Auletta’s earlier articles and books, especially Backstory: Inside the Business of News (2003),  but I highly recommend that you check out the latest essay he posted on his blog about “Media Maxims.”  Outstanding insights.

It’s been a big year for tech policy books. Several important titles were released in 2008 that offer interesting perspectives about the future of the Internet and the impact digital technologies are having on our lives, culture, and economy. Back in September, I compared some of the most popular technology policy books of the past five years and tried to group them into two camps: “Internet optimists” vs. “Internet pessimists.” That post generated a great deal of discussion and I plan on expanding it into a longer article soon. In this post, however, I will merely list what I regard as the most important technology policy books of the past year.

What qualifies as an “important” tech policy book? Basically, it’s a title that many people in this field are currently discussing and that we will likely be talking about for many years to come. I want to make it clear, however, that merely because a book appears on this list it does not necessarily mean I agree with everything said in it. In fact, I found much with which to disagree in my picks for the two most important books of 2008, as well as many of the other books on the list. [Moreover, after reading all these books, I am more convinced than ever that libertarians are badly losing the intellectual battle of ideas over Internet issues and digital technology policy. There’s just very few people defending a “Hands-Off-the-Net” approach anymore. But that’s a subject for another day!]

Another caveat: Narrowly focused titles lose a few points on my list. For example, as was the case in past years, a number of important IP-related books have come out this year. If a book deals exclusively with copyright or patent issues, it does not exactly qualify as the same sort of “tech policy book” as other titles found on this list since it is a narrow exploration of just one set of issues that have a bearing on digital technology policy. The same could be said of a book that deals exclusively with privacy policy, like Solove’s Understanding Privacy. It’s an important book with implications for the future of tech policy, but I demoted it a bit because of its narrow focus.

With those caveats in mind, here are my Top 10 Most Important Tech Policy Books of 2008 (and please let me know about your picks for book of the year):

(1) Jonathan Zittrain ­– The Future of the Internet, and How to Stop It

Zittrain’s book is the most important of 2008 because it’s the one we will still be talking the most about a decade from now. However, I think we’ll be talking about how wrong his thesis was that the “generative” Internet and general purpose PCs are dying.  Indeed, I’ve been quite critical of the thesis that Jonathan sets forth in his book, and I have discussed my reservations in a lengthy book review and a series of follow-up essays here and elsewhere. (Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).  We’ve also debated his book on the an NPR-Boston [audio is here] and we debated in person at New America Foundation in early November [video is here].

Despite my serious reservations, Jonathan’s book is important, well-written, and absolutely deserves your attention if you care about the future of technology policy.

(2) Nick Carr – The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google

Part 1 of Nick Carr’s book is an eloquent early history of cloud computing, nicely comparing it to previous technological revolutions. It’s beautifully done. In Part 2 of the book, however, Carr turns sour and argues that the impact of cloud computing will be quite miserable for our economy, culture, and society. The Big Switch probably makes the best case than any Net pessimist has been penned thus far, and for that reason alone it deserves your attention. Ultimately, however, I found his case unconvincing.

You can find my complete review of Carr’s book here.

(3) John Palfrey and Urs Gasser – Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives

Palfrey and Gasser’s fine early history of this generation of “Digital Natives” serves as a starting point for any conversation about how to mentor and interact with the children of the Web. It’s a comprehensive and very even-handed discussion about a variety of concerns or Internet pathologies, including: online safety, personal privacy, copyright piracy, offensive content, classroom learning, and much more. Despite a few nitpicks, I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. Importantly, it is a very accessible book that even the non-tech layman can pick up and appreciate. [Note: Don Tapscott’s Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World, shares a lot in common with Born Digital, but Tapscott doesn’t spend much time on policy issues and that’s why his book isn’t on my list.]

My review of Palfrey and Gasser’s Born Digital is here. [Update Feb 2009: I also hosted a podcast about the book featuring Prof. Palfrey.]

(4) Clay Shirky – Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations

While Nick Carr [see #2 above] and Lee Siegel [see #5 below] are leading the “techno-pessimist” parade this year, Clay Shirky is this year’s leading cheerleader for “cyber-optimism.” Shirky argues that the falling costs and growing ease of digital distribution are making it increasingly easy for individuals to engage in group-forming and collective action endeavors. The resulting rise of “mass amateurization” poses a significant challenge to old media operations and traditional business models and practices. In this sense, Shirky is building on many of the themes and arguments previously set forth in books like The Wealth of Networks (Benkler), Wikinomics (Tapscott and Williams), and Convergence Culture (Jenkins). If you’ve already read those titles, you’ll find a great deal of familiar thinking here.

I never got around to putting together a full review of Here Comes Everybody, but Tim Lee had a nice write-up over at Ars earlier this year.

(5) Lee Siegel – Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob

Siegal is this year’s Andrew Keen; a cyber-sourpuss who thinks the whole world is going to hell and that the Internet is to blame. Like Keen’s Cult of the Amateur, Siegel’s Against the Machine is an anti-Web 2.0 screed that finds no redeeming qualities about the Internet or user-generated content.  In particular, Wikipedia and amateur production are blasted as being detrimental to professional media.

Both Siegel and Keen are essentially channeling the ghost of the late Neil Postman, whose 1992 book Technopoly remains the classic statement of techno-pessimism. They prove worthy disciples as they preach the Gospel According to Chicken Little and push for a neo-Luddite revival. But Siegel’s techno-pessimism is boundless and his hatred for all things digital is truly breathtaking. For that reason, however, his book deserves attention.

My lengthy critique of Siegel’s book can be found here.

(6) Ronald J. Deibert, John G. Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain (eds.) – Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering

This is essential reading for anyone studying the methods governments are using to stifle online expression. The contributors provide a regional and country-by-country overview of the global state of online speech controls and discuss the long-term ramifications of increasing government filtering of online networks. Even if you don’t read the whole thing, this is a must-have title for your bookshelf since there is no other resource out there like this. And it should be required reading in every cyberlaw class in America. [Note: It also contains a very helpful chapter on the mechanics of Net filtering.]  Very highly recommended.

(7) Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen, and Harry Lewis – Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion

Think of this book as “Internet Policy for the Educated Layman.” Abelson, Ledeen, and Lewis survey a broad swath of tech policy territory — privacy, search, encryption, free speech, copyright, spectrum policy — and provide the reader with a nice history and technology primer on each topic. Like Palfrey and Gasser’s Born Digital [see #3 above], Blown to Bits is very accessible and each chapter contains a great deal of useful information to bring you up to speed on the hottest tech policy debates under the sun. Recommended.

My review of Blown to Bits can be found here.

(8) Lawrence Lessig – Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy

Remix treads a lot of ground already covered in Lessig’s other books and essays (perhaps it should have been called “Rehash”), but it more fully develops his thinking on the legal treatment of derivative works. Actually, in some ways (especially in the second half of the book), it’s more of a restatement of much of what is found in Benkler’s Wealth of Networks, albeit in a far less verbose fashion. Regardless, Prof. Lessig has attained rock-star status in tech policy circles and the release of each of his new books or papers becomes a bit of an event. Remix has been no different. It has already attracted a great deal of attention and deserves to be on this list for that reason alone. But if you have read his previous work, you’ll already be familiar with much of what you find in Remix.

Generally speaking, I thought Prof. Lessig made a good case regarding the benefits of remix culture and why copyright law should leave breathing room for the various derivative works of amateur creators. But he too often blurs remix culture with “ripoff culture” (i.e., those who aren’t out to create anything new but instead just take something without paying a penny for it). To solve that latter problem, he endorses a “simple” blanket licensing scheme for the Internet. In this essay, I addressed why blanket online licensing would be anything but simple.

(9) James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer – Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk

Bessen and Meurer argue that America’s patent system is in trouble because “it fail[s] to provide clear and efficient notice of the boundaries of the rights granted.” Patent litigation has exploded, they say, and the costs of the system now outweigh the benefits. Generally speaking, with the exception of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, Bessen and Meurer don’t feel the patent system does a lot of good.”[I]t seems unlikely that patents today are an effective policy instrument to encourage innovation overall,” they conclude. They detail several reforms to help improve notice and to “make patents work as property” again the way they claim they once did.

Although the authors deal with patents broadly, the book has great relevance to digital technology policy because of their discussion of business method patents and software patents. (Incidentally, that chapter from the book is available online). They argue that software technology is especially prone to problems of “abstraction” and obviousness. As a result, software patenting has been a major contributor to the litigation explosion we have seen in recent years.

Although I agree with their case against software patents, I remain unconvinced that the patent system is failing as badly as Bessen and Meurer claim. Nonetheless, they present a powerful case that deserves to be taken seriously. Patent Failure will have an enormous impact on these debates going forward.

For more opinions on the book… Tim Lee posted a favorable review of Patent Failure over at Ars this summer. And, back in March, there was a lively discussion about the book over at Patently-O. Finally, at last year’s PFF “Aspen Summit,” Michael Meurer debated these issues with some of America’s leading patent law experts. Bronwyn H. Hall, Professor of Economics at Cal-Berkeley, challenges his findings. The video of that panel is here.

(10) Daniel Solove – Understanding Privacy

Daniel Solove’s book — and his approach to classifying and dealing with privacy problems — will have a profound impact on all future privacy debates. In that sense, it is a vital text; a must read for all who follow, or engage in, privacy debates.  On the other hand, Solove’s claim that he can construct a new paradigm based strictly on a pragmatic, utilitarian, “?problem-solving” approach, is ultimately a failure. There is just no getting around the fact that, at some point, you are going to have to provide a more robust theory of rights or justice to explain why one right trumps another. I elaborate in this lengthy critique of Solove’s Understanding Privacy.

Honorable Mentions: Here are a couple of titles that I couldn’t fit on my list but that you might want to also consider reading: Neil Netanel – Copyright’s Paradox; Matt Mason – The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism; David Friedman – Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World; Cory Doctorow — Content; and Don Tapscott — Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World.

Please let me know if there are other titles I have overlooked, and let me know your opinion about the best technology policy book(s) of 2008 by voting in our poll and commenting more down below.

[poll id=”3″]

I just finished reading through The Economist’s new 14-page special report on cloud computing, “Let It Rise” in which Ludwig Siegele provides an outstanding overview of cloud computing and why it is so important:

The rise of the cloud is more than just another platform shift that gets geeks excited. It will undoubtedly transform the information technology (IT) industry, but it will also profoundly change the way people work and companies operate. It will allow digital technology to penetrate every nook and cranny of the economy and of society, creating some tricky political problems along the way.

Even if you are very familiar with cloud computing, I recommend you take a look at the article. Anyway, while I was reading it, I was unsurprised to come across some comments from Nicholas Carr, whose new book The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, is essentially an early history of cloud computing and an investigation into its effects on our economy, culture, and society. And that also reminded me that, even though I have mentioned Carr’s book here several times since it was released earlier this year, I have failed to give it a dedicated review. And it certain deserves one because “The Big Switch” is easily one of the most important technology policy books of 2008.

One of the reasons Carr’s book will be high up on my end of the year list of best tech books has nothing to do with substance. It’s his style. Carr is one of most gifted writers in the tech policy field today. His eloquence and brilliant story-telling skills remind me of George Gilder in his prime. Carr nicely places modern developments in a historical context and relates the changes we are witnessing today to previous technological innovations and eras.

At the same time, however, Carr has also become one of the America’s leading Internet skeptics and vocal critics of techno-utopianism, as I noted in an essay a few months ago about Internet optimists and pessimists. He is, by far, the most reasonable and respected of those Net skeptics, using a measured tone when attacking those who have adopted a more pollyanna-ish, rose-colored view of the world. [For similar reasons, Carr’s “Rough Type” blog is must-reading for anyone who monitors technology policy.]

Electric Parallels

But on to the substance of the book. Carr’s thesis is that we are in the midst of “another epochal [technological] transformation” that parallels what happened with the “democratization of electricity” a century ago:

What happened to the generation of power a century ago is now happening to the processing of information. Private computer systems, built and operated by individual companies, are being supplanted by services provided by a common grid — the Internet — by centralized data-processing plants. Computing is turning into a utility, and once again the economic equations that determine the way we work and live are being rewritten. (p. 12)

“That shift,” Carr continues, “promises not only to change the nature of corporate IT departments but to shake up the entire computer industry.” (p. 13) Indeed, the “revolutionary potential of the information utility” promises to have profound implications:

In the years ahead, more and more of the information processing tasks that we rely on, at home and at work, will be handled by big data centers located out on the Internet. The nature and economics of computing will change as dramatically as the nature and economics of mechanical power changed in the early years of the last century. The consequences for society — for the way we live, work, learn, communicate, entertain ourselves, and even think — promise to be equally profound. (p. 21)

Unsurprisingly, Google is the central player in Carr’s drama because it is “a giant information utility” (p. 13) that has capitalized on the movement of so much knowledge and technology into the cloud and off of our desktops. Carr argues that “once utility services mature, the idea of getting rid of your PC will become much more attractive” (p. 80) and “We may find, twenty or so years from now, that the personal computer has become a museum piece, a reminder of a curious time when all of us where forced to be amateur computer technicians.” (p. 81)

Carr’s Critique of “Techno-Utopianism”

Part One of The Big Switch is primarily concerned with this progression of computing and IT from specialized service to mainstream utility, and I believe that most readers will find it as engrossing and enlightened as I did. But the tone and focus of Carr’s book change dramatically as Part Two opens. Whereas Carr keeps Part One fairly value- or viewpoint-neutral, Part Two is a more spirited critique of the economic and cultural consequences of “The Big Switch.”

In Part Two, he launches into his attack of the “techno-utopianism” that sometimes accompanies discussions about the implications of the Information Age and life in the cloud. “[O]ptimism is a natural response to the arrival of a powerful and mysterious new technology,” but, Carr warns, “it can blind us to more troubling portents.” And “there is reason to believe that our cybernetic meadow may be something less than a new Eden.” (p. 125)

It is here that Carr’s critique becomes familiar to those of us who follow the modern Internet policy debates. As I noted in my “Internet Optimists and Pessimists” essay, Carr is joining the ranks of other Net skeptics like Andrew Keen, Lee Siegel, and others. In my recent review of Lee Siegel’s Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob, I traced this strand of social criticism back to the late Neil Postman, author of the 1992 anti-technology manifesto, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology.

Carr’s concerns about the consequences of cloud computing and the rise of “techno-utopianism” parallel those found in those other “pessimistic” tracts, although Carr is far more level-headed in articulating those fears. As I noted in the Siegel review, those concerns can generally be grouped as follows:

1. The Net is destroying (or at least greatly diminishing) the role of experts, authority, “truth”, and traditional societal norms and institutions. This is having (or eventually will result in) dangerous ramifications for our culture, economy, and democracy.
2. The personalization and customization that the Information Age and the Internet have spawned could have troubling ramifications for our society and culture.

Dangers of Disintermediation and the Problem with “Free”

Regarding the first of these concerns, Carr argues that “while it’s true that the reduction in production and distribution costs is bringing us many more options, it would be a mistake to leap to the conclusion that nothing will be sacrificed in the process. More choices don’t necessarily mean better choices,” he says. (p. 151) He continues:

Many cultural goods remain expensive to create or require the painstaking work of talented professionals, and it’s worth considering how the changing economics of media will affect them. Will these goods be able to find a large enough paying audience to underwrite their existence, or will they end up being crowded out of the marketplace by the proliferation of free, or easily accessible products? Even though the Internet can in theory accommodate a nearly infinite variety of information goods, that doesn’t mean that the market will be able to support all of them. Some of the most cherished creative works may not survive the transition to the Web’s teeming bazaar. (p. 151)

More specifically, Carr is worried about what “The Great Unbundling” — i.e., the radically disruptive disintermediation associated with the Internet Age — will mean for the future of “hard news,” investigative journalism, and prized forms of culture. The cross-subsidies that have supported the creation of such content are at risk, Carr fears, as the Net’s relentless drive for increased efficiency rolls like a digital wrecking ball through the old media and cultural landscape. “[T]he largest threat posed by social production won’t be to big corporations but to individual professionals — to the journalists, editors, photographers, researchers, analysts, librarians, and other information workers who can be replaced,” Carr says, by “crowdsourcing.” (p. 142)

In this way, Carr’s concerns are quite similar to those raised by Andrew Keen and others about how the Internet is potentially “killing our culture” (or at least the best of it as they would define it). But Carr extends this social critique in an important way by claiming that the problem with the emerging model of social production and “free” business models that dominate the online marketplace today is that they are built on a “sharecropper model.” The Net’s dominant giants, he argues, are reaping their riches on the back of free labor. These new sites and services “are essentially agglomerations of the creative, unpaid contributions of their members. In a twist on the old agricultural practice of sharecropping, the site owners provide the digital real estate and tools, let the members do all the work, and then harvest the economic riches.” (p. 137-8)

I have some sympathy for these arguments, especially as they have been articulated by Carr here in The Big Switch. Compared to the way other critics like Keen and Siegel have used over-the-top apocalyptic, neo-Luddite rhetoric when discussing their related concerns, Carr generally avoids such hysteria and does a better job of laying out his concerns about the Net and cloud computing in a more reasonable fashion. And there is little doubt that the Internet and social production models are placing enormous strain on many traditional professions and professionals.

I have problems with his “sharecropper” argument, however. This logic ignores the non-monetary benefits that many of us feel we extract from today’s online business models and social production processes. Most of us feel we get a lot back as part of this new value exchange. Carr is certainly correct that Google, Facebook, MySpace, and a lot of other Net middlemen are getting big and rich based on all the user-generated content flowing over their sites and systems. On the other hand, most cyber-citizens extract enormous benefits from the existence of those (mostly free and constantly improving) platforms and services. It’s a very different sort of value exchange and business model than most of us have been accustomed to in the past, but we are adjusting to it. We humans are resilient, adaptable creatures and we can usually learn to cope with such changes and find a way to use them to our advantage. It’s not all about companies getting rich; we are getting richer too, but in a different way. We have an abundance of information, culture, and communications opportunities at our disposal today that were simply unthinkable even a generation ago.

Carr and other Net skeptics certainly raise some very legitimate questions about the limitations of the “free culture” mindset, however. There are times when the net optimists really do sound like the pollyannish “utopians” that Carr claims they are. When I am reading the work of Benkler and other optimists, it sometimes comes across as techno-Rousseauian gibberish (or what Carr labels “the Internet’s liberation mythology.”) The Internet isn’t remaking man or changing human nature in any fundamental way, which is what some optimists seem to imply. Moreover, when it comes to economics, all this talk about the Long Tail being “the future of business” (Chris Anderson) and of “Wikinomics… changing everything through mass collaboration,” (Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams) goes much too far in my opinion. It’s irrational (techno-) exuberance.

On the other hand, Carr and the other pessimists occasionally go to the opposite extreme in critiquing new models of social production, open source, and other collaborative creative endeavors. Their obsession with Wikipedia is particularly curious. If one views Wikipedia and Wiki- models as supplements or compliments to traditional media and communications models and activities, then where is the harm? Most of us understand they are not perfect, but we can appreciate the benefits they bring society despite their limitations.

When it comes to the true impact of the Internet on our economy and culture, the truth is somewhere in between the two extremes staked out by optimists and pessimists. My own position in this regard might best be labeled “pragmatic optimism”: One can appreciate how much better off the Internet has made society while also recognizing that it has created new challenges that we need to think through.

Downsides of Hyper-Personalization

The other important theme developed by Carr in the second half of The Big Switch, which also runs throughout the work of other techno-pessimist tracts, is that the increased personalization and customization facilitated by the Internet is breeding dangerous anti-social attitudes and tendencies. Building on an argument first put forth by Cass Sunstein in his 2001 book Republic.com , Carr worries about the impact of the “Daily Me.” The “Daily Me” was the term Nicholas Negroponte coined in his prescient 1995 book Being Digital, to describe the new digital world he hoped would develop, filled with hyper-personalized, instantaneously-delivered content. And that’s largely the Web 2.0 world we live in today.

But Carr, Sunstein, and many other Net skeptics, refer to Negroponte’s “Daily Me” in contemptuous terms, arguing that the hyper-customization of websites and online technologies is causing extreme social “fragmentation,” “polarization,” “balkanization,” and “single-mindedness.” Carr warns:

Every time we subscribe to a blog, add a friend to our social network, categorize an email message as spam, or even choose a site from a list of search results, we are making a decision that defines, in some small way, whom we associate with and what information we pay attention to. (p. 160)

Thus, he fears, we could be “click[ing] our way to a fractured society” (p. 160) because of the “ideological amplification” (p. 164) bred by the Daily Me. There’s even the risk of increased fanaticism, radicalization, and extremism, he warns.

I have addressed this argument at length in my 2005 book, Media Myths (p. 39) but, to summarize, the fundamental problem with this logic is that it ignores the fact that, thanks to the rise of the Net, most of us are experiencing far more diverse voices and viewpoints than we ever did in the past. Sure, it is true that we also can now find our little niche groups and bunk-up with them online for extended periods, but I find it absurd to claim that we humans are less exposed to diverse viewpoints today than in the past.

Regardless, even if Carr and the other Net skeptics are correct and the Net is breeding such isolation and balkanization, what are we suppose to do about it? Should we roll back the clock to the good ol’ days? Carr doesn’t give us a straight answer. But, again, there are good reasons to question whether society was really better off in the pre-Internet days. The Analog / Scarcity Era had it’s own share of problems, beginning with the fact that it was extremely difficult for niche interests in our society to be served when media was catering to a mass audience through newspapers and broadcast stations. Certainly, the old model of media delivery had its advantages, but the drawbacks were enormous, and not just as it pertained to entertainment. Consider news: If we all weren’t home sitting in front of our TV sets at exactly 6:30 each night, then we missed our chance to hear the same three old white guys in bad suits tells us what the important news of the day was. Look, I liked Cronkite, Brinkley & Co., but I will take today’s 24/7 news cycle of instantaneous news over that old system any day of the week.

Again, there are trade-offs at work here. Things are not all roses like Net optimists would claim. The downside of an endless news cycle is that people can just find a niche news channel or program that feeds them news more closely in line with their own ideological tendencies. Moreover, there very well may be — to use Glenn Reynolds’s phrase — “An Army of Davids” out there in the blogosphere today taking on traditional media and expressing themselves however they wish, but that doesn’t automatically mean they all have something interesting to say! Even when they do, there is still a useful role played by mass media providers or “professional” media in steering news and culture. Indeed, they provide an essential editing function in terms of helping us decide what types of news or culture may be more important. I personally rely on the Wall Street Journal to help guide my investigation of what financial market news is worth exploring each week. I wouldn’t want to just set up my Google Alerts to feed me “financial news” and then trust that everything that came into my RSS reader was worth reading. In this sense, the WSJ is what I call a “trusted information intermediary” (or “old school filter” if you will) that many of us could not live without.

But that traditional intermediary editing and filtering function, which used to be total in its applicability to news and culture, is now shrinking rapdily. “Mass media” just isn’t quite as MASS-ive as it once was, and the rise of personalized “Daily Me” media and culture certainly has had something to do with that since it has allow us to filter news and culture ourselves.  But why can’t we have the best of both worlds — some old school filtering by trusted information intermediaries along with plenty of personalized filtering? In many ways, I think we have that balance today — and it is a wonderful thing. Pessimists like Carr seem to only focus on the downsides of customized media, and that’s unfortunate. Nonetheless, they are right to ask the tough questions about how long those old school filters (traditional media intermediaries) will survive if all of us flock to an extreme “Daily Me” mindset. My contention, however, is that we won’t. Most of us appreciate the balanced approach and are willing to support some — but not all — of those old intermediaries and filters.

I have far less sympathy for Carr’s argument that increased specialization and customization are breeding “fanaticism” and “radicalization.” Last time I checked, mobs weren’t rioting in the streets or rushing out to join the Nazi or Communist parties! Those knuckleheads still exist, of course, but they have always existed. And let’s not forget, it was during the age of scarcity and mass media that those movements gained traction and took control in some countries. In the Internet Age, by contrast, such extremist loonies usually get exposed and widely ridiculed. As the old saying goes, the answer to bad speech is more speech. The Internet has given it to us and helped us counter such societal extremism, even if it has simultaneously given such extremists a new soapbox to stand on and spew their hatred and stupidity. Let them spew it and we will respond! And we will marginalize them in the process. There’s just no chance some sort of mini-Hitler is going to use the Net to revive fascism and build a mass audience today.

Finally, I believe Carr makes a similar mistake when he argues that computers and the Internet are really more “technologies of control” than “technologies of emancipation.” (p. 191)  “While the Net offers people a new medium for discovering information and voicing opinions, it also provides bureaucrats with a powerful new tool for monitoring speech, identifying dissidents, and disseminating propaganda.” (p. 200)  In this sense, Carr is adopting the same pessimistic tone set forth by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu in their book Who Controls the Internet? While I agree that computers and the Net give the big bad statist bureaucrats new tools of control, I persist in my belief that these digital tools offer the masses more methods of evading and minimizing the power of government over their lives and liberties.  Again, I think it is important to put things in some historical context. In the past, governments could completely control the media and disseminate incessant propaganda. It is far more difficult for them to get away with that today, and citizens have many tools and outlets at their disposal to respond.  Digital technologies really are technologies of emancipation, but we can’t expect them to break the backs of the statist thugs overnight.

Conclusion

Carr’s pessimism on the two issues discussed above is succinctly captured on pg. 167 of his book when he argues that:

it’s clear that two of the hopes most dear to the Internet optimists — that the Web will create a more bountiful culture and that it will promote greater harmony and understanding — should be treated with skepticism. Cultural impoverishment and social fragmentation seem equally likely outcomes.

That almost perfectly delineates the battle lines in the great debate taking place today between Internet optimists and pessimists. The Big Switch probably makes the best case for the pessimists that has been penned thus far, and for that reason alone it deserves your attention. However, I continue to remain cautiously optimistic that the Net is moving our economy, culture, and society in a better direction — at least compared to a past, which had its own share of drawbacks and problems.

P.S. If you are interested in the ongoing debate about cloud computing — and specifically the question of how much competition we can expect going forward — you’ll definitely want to check out this very interesting discussion taking place between Hugh Macleod, Tim O’Reilly, and Nick Carr.

• “The Cloud’s Best-Kept Secret” — Hugh Macleod
• “Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing” — Tim O’Reilly
• “What Tim O’Reilly gets wrong about the cloud” — Nick Carr
• “Further musings on the network effect and the cloud” — Nick Carr

Also, here’s a video of Nick Carr’s recent appearance on “The Colbert Report”:

[Note: I updated this discussion and chart in a subsequent essay. See: “Are You An Internet Optimist or Pessimist? The Great Debate over Technology’s Impact on Society.”]

A number of very interesting books have been released over the past year or two which debate how the Internet is reshaping our culture and the economy. I’ve reviewed a couple of them here but I have been waiting to compile a sort of mega-book review once I found a sensible way to conceptually group them together. I’m not going to have time to cover each of them here in the detail they deserve, but I think I have at least found a sensible way to categorize them. For lack of better descriptors, I’ve divided these books and thinkers into two camps: “Internet optimists” versus “Internet Pessimists.” Here’s a list of some of the individuals and books (or other articles and blogs) that I believe epitomize these two camps of thinking:

Adherents & Their Books / Writings

And here’s a rough sketch of the major beliefs or key themes that separate these two schools of thinking about the impact of the Internet on our culture and economy:

Beliefs / Themes

So, what to make of this intellectual war? Who’s got the story right?

Although it will be easy for many in the blogosphere to side with the Internet optimists — and I would count myself as generally being in the optimist camp — I think the Net pessimists make many fair points about the disruptive nature of the Internet and how it forcing individuals and industries to completely reconsider the way they live their lives or organize their business affairs. Many Net optimists have a tendency to paint an excessively rosy picture of the transformative nature of the Net. In the extreme, the optimists seem to imply that the Net is somehow remaking man, altering human nature, and changing the economy only for the better. Among the Net optimists, there’s often a lot of romanticized talk of collective action / intelligence overcoming all barriers to knowledge or progress, and so on. (Sometimes I am guilty of a bit of that myself in my writing here). Net optimists need to be careful about overstating their case, especially on the economic front, and we would be wise to read the work of the Net pessimists with that criticism in mind.

The problem with the Internet pessimists, however, is that their skepticism often borders on Chicken Little-ism or outright Ludditism. I thought Andrew Keen’s Cult of the Amateur was about as over-the-top as things could get in this regard. (See my 2-part book review here and here), but then I worked my way through Lee Siegel’s tedious screed, Against the Machine. It made Keen seem downright reasonable and cheery by comparison! Keen and Siegel seem to be in heated competition for the title “High Prophet of Internet Doom,” but Siegel is currently a nose ahead in that race.

Nick Carr is probably the most reasonable and respected of the Net skeptics. He is an enormously gifted writer and I always enjoy reading his books, articles, and blog entries, even when I disagree with him. In The Big Switch, he makes many valid points about the downsides of the gut-wrenching changes that the Net is bringing about. Similarly, in his provocative recent Atlantic article, “Is Google Making us Stupid?”, he wonders how the Net is negatively affecting our minds and attention spans. Carr also argues that the Internet economy is increasingly built on a “sharecropper” model that essentially exploits the free labor of the multitudes to make just a handful of major Net operators rich. He makes some interesting points but, ultimately, I think he overstates the problem. Most of us feel we get a lot back as part of this value exchange. Sure, Google, Facebook, and a lot of other Net middlemen are getting big and rich based on all the user-generated content flowing over their sites and systems, but we extract enormous benefits from the existence of those (mostly free and constantly improving) platforms and services.

Nonetheless, the Net pessimists (especially Carr) raise some very legitimate questions about the limitations of the “free culture” mindset. They are on stronger ground when the highlight the problems associated with online piracy, however, than when they are critiquing Wikipedia and the occasional limitations or errors of collaborative endeavors like it. But Wikipedia in particular seems to be an obsession for many of the Net pessimists, especially Carr and Keen.

It is also true, however, that Net optimists like Tapscott and Benkler sometimes make too much out of “wiki” / collective intelligence models, seemingly implying that proprietary business models, private firms, and potentially capitalism itself are passé notions. I disagree. While I think wiki / collective intelligence approaches have their place and play a vitally important role in our new digital economy, the old ways of doing things are still alive and well and producing some wonderful results. For example, “The Dark Knight” wasn’t the product of spontaneous collective action, and I still don’t see any truly compelling open source video games to compete with the likes of “Madden 2009” or “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.” I think some of the Net optimists get a bit carried away at times when the place too much faith in the “Wikipedia-ization” of everything, or the idea that the Long Tail is somehow “The Future of Business,” as the subtitle of Chris Anderson’s book suggest. I think that goes much too far. On the other hand, I am huge fan of Wiki & Long Tail models and, like most others, understand their limitations. Those models will play an increasingly important role in the Net economy moving forward whether the Net pessimists like it or not. Bottom line: each model or mode of production has its place and purpose and they will continue to co-exist going forward, albeit in serious tension at times.

Perhaps when I have more time I will return to this discussion and fill it out more with some passages and quotes from each book. I just don’t have the time right now but I will try to do so at some point in the future. Anyway, these are important books that deserve your attention if you are following the debate over the impact the Net is having — for better or worse — on our culture and economy.