William H. Davidow

The title suggests something like a manifesto but it's mostly descriptive. There's a couple vague predictions and a lot of moaning about the death of publishing and journalism (I sympathise, but there's no way to bring back journalism and I didn't see the author suggest any solutions for that either).

The authors appear well informed but from books like this I expect insights, not just facts, especially since none of them are obscure. Having said that, not many books I've read bring attention to the information we leak constantly about ourselves (by, for example, reviewing books online) that can and will be used against us in forms that we don't anticipate. Forget about the government coming to lock you up for wrongthink, unless you live in the UK, think about your social credit score used by your future employer. You thought that only exists in China? China has it centralised and run by the government, we have it as part of our free market. For some reason the author thinks this is somehow in the future while it's very much already in the present. And I'm not talking about employers checking your social media or some similar low-tech approach. Kudos for highlighting this problem.

Bizarrely though the author looks at everything from the government's perspective (as far as I can tell neither of them is a politician) and his only solutions are just pointless legislation that is about as likely to work as GDPR (which he appears to be positive on). The data broker idea isn't a technical(ly feasible) solution either - just more impossible legislation.… (más)

Disappointing. First of all, Davidow can’t decide whether he means “internet” or “modern communication technologies.” Many of the things he describes as generating dangerous connections and thus dependencies on complex systems that can easily and quickly be brought down by small mistakes can equally be done by private systems, and in some cases were done by such systems linking only, for example, banks. Second, Davidow chooses to place blame at weird points: the internet is responsible for the dot-com crash not because dot-coms were internet companies, but because it allowed the rise of day traders, who invested even when the smart money had moved on. This is, to put it mildly, somewhat misleading about the role of fraud and insider self-dealing in handing out gifts to the well-connected; it’s true that there needed to be some suckers left to take the hit when reality emerged, but they’re not the ones I hold responsible (or think regulation should focus on) any more than the people who took out subprime loans are the “cause” of the current economic collapse. Davidow is also disappointingly short on solutions, which isn’t surprising if he hasn’t identified key causes.… (más)