Скачать или смотреть Civic Media Lunch: Andrew Keen, “The Internet Is Not the Answer”

Now that the World Wide Web has been with us for twenty-five years, no one can doubt that it has transformed the world forever. But, in The Internet Is Not the Answer (Atlantic Monthly Press; January 6, 2015), Andrew Keen argues that on balance the web has done more harm than good except for a tiny group of young, privileged, white male Silicon Valley multi-millionaires.

Rather than making us wealthier, he writes, the unregulated digital economy is slowly making us all poorer. Rather than generating jobs, it is contributing significantly to rising unemployment. Rather than fostering equality, it is creating a chasm between rich and poor. Rather than holding our rulers to account, it is turning the world into a brightly lit glass cage in which everything is recorded and privacy no longer exists. Rather than promoting democracy, it is empowering mob rule. And rather than fostering a new renaissance, it is encouraging a culture of distraction, vulgarity, and narcissism.

How did we get here? Keen reminds us of the innocent beginnings of the Internet as he traces its evolution from World War II to the Cold War and then to the early nineties when Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web began its remarkable rise. It was then that the U.S. government handed over the publicly funded network to the commercial forces of start-ups like Netscape.