Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The award-winning author of 'The Net Delusion' shows how the radical transparency we've become accustomed to online may threaten the spirit of real-life democracy.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This book is an intellectually probing, if somewhat caustic, work that aims to dispel the seemingly mythologized notion of "the Internet" as the ultimate technological achievement. Morozov (journalist; The Net Delusion, CH, Aug'11, 48-7161) argues that the Internet is merely a glorified appliance that eases the completion of tasks that people previously performed in other ways. He argues that people fetishize the Internet by claiming it can tell people something important about how the world works or that it can provide the key to creating better public policy. This "Internet-centrism" tends to feed a "solutionist mind-set" that presumes problems instead of investigating them. Morozov argues for a post-Internet approach that secularizes or demystifies this technology. No one is safe in his Molotov cocktail-like critique. Technology proponents and critics alike are pilloried throughout for adopting Internet-centric positions to justify their arguments. At times, the author's criticism seems narrow-minded. In contrast to N. Carr's The Shallows (CH, Nov'10, 48-1521), this book unfairly dismisses an insightful, well-reasoned criticism on how individuals interact with and are affected by this technology. Nevertheless, Morozov has much to offer to the ongoing cultural debate over the Internet--aggrandized or not--and its place in society. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; general readers. J. A. Bullian Hillsborough Community College

Kirkus Book Review

More righteous technological contrarianism from Morozov (The Net Delusion, 2011, etc.). Can technology solve social problems? To an extent, perhaps, writes the author. But for every Utopian application of a computer, dystopia awaits: Technology may afford hitherto disenfranchised or at least undercounted people an equal voice, but inside the world of clicks, likes and read-throughs lurk dragons. Morozov, who calls himself a "digital heretic," doesn't offer fully fleshed solutions to the problems a detechnologized world poses, but he dislikes the thought of the "frictionless future" all the same, even if its contours are sometimes vague. Having had experience with totalitarianism, Morozov is bothered by the prospect of social engineers having ever brighter and shinier tools at their disposal: "All will be tempted to exploit the power of these new techniques, either individually or in combination, to solve a particular problem, be it obesity, climate change, or congestion." It's not that those problems aren't real; it's that, by Morozov's account, what underlies them are things human and not technological, requiring human solutions. Thus it is, he writes, that the brave new world of online education may be exciting to many, but it overlooks a strong component of academic success--namely, the face-to-face (F2F, that is) access students have to their professors. And as for a disintermediating site such as Rate Your Professors? It's just another avatar, writes Morozov, of the introduction of "the consumerist mentality into education." Healthy skepticism dealt with a sometimes too-heavy hand, and a useful corrective for those who believe that we'll somehow engineer ourselves out of our current mess.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.