Jeff Jarvis (1)

Already an internet journalist of considerable reputation when this book appeared in 2011, Jeff Jarvis knows his way around the digital world. His subject here is the impact of digital culture on privacy, and how society should respond to that impact, and it is (if anything) even more in need of serious discussion now than it was in 2011. Unfortunately, Public Parts is a deeply frustrating book .

Jarvis is -- like Clay Shirky (Here Comes Everybody), Steven Johnson (Everything Bad Is Good for show more You) and Clive Thompson (Smarter Than You Think) -- fundamentally optimistic about the possibilities of digital technology. He spends a great deal of time and energy, over the course of the book, arguing for the value of sharing information online. Shared data, he notes, can be aggregated with other, similar data and so become more useful to researchers tracking subtle patterns. Shared observations from ordinary users of complex systems can enable the companies and governments that run those systems to identify and fix problems before they get out of hand. Sharing your struggles with disease (Jarvis uses his own bout with prostate cancer as an example) can bring expressions of support and helpful advice from others who have been through it. He also makes a case, more briefly and in less depth, that many prior advances in communication (the printing press, the portable camera) have also triggered similar worries about privacy. The printed word and the snapshot became normalized, he argues, and so will today's digital tools; our moral panics over Facebook and Twitter will one day seem as quaint as breathless denunciations of "Kodak fiends" from the early 1900s.

I share Jarvis' techno-optimism, and appreciate his overarching point that digital communication -- like any other new tool -- inevitably involves tradeoffs, and that society needs to thoughtfully manage the tradeoffs rather than throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. If he'd dug into the meat of some of those tradeoffs, taking the potential benefits and costs equally seriously and considering both in detail, I'd have given this book several more stars. I wouldn't even expect specific, concrete solutions . . . just an honest grapple with the issues.

Unfortunately, Jarvis falls back far too often on hand-waving, especially when it comes to the potential drawbacks of sharing online. Yes, sharing your health issues (coping with the side-effects of medical treatment, managing a chronic condition, trying to lose weight) can bring expressions of support and offers of useful advice. It can also bring condescension, fat-shaming, and torrents of medically dubious (or downright harmful) advice. Yes, having a digital version of your lifelong medical record that could be accessed by any provider you were consulting would be a godsend. Yet, at the same time, having the for-profit health insurance industry on which Americans depend have access to that record would be (for many) utterly terrifying. Throwing out the bathwater and keeping the baby is -- to put it mildly -- a challenge, but Jarvis rarely acknowledges that the bathwater even exists, let alone gives attention to how to separate the two.

Jarvis also comes across, far too often for my taste, as annoyingly glib. Yes, identity theft falls under the fraud and larceny statutes (and so "isn't a privacy issue," but that's hardly a comfort when the data that Company X demanded from you as part of the price of contracting with them (whether or not it was necessary to them delivering what you were paying them for) is released to the world in a data. Yes, the crime in employment discrimination is not your would-be employer knowing that you're female, Black, gay, over 65 or whatever but acting inappropriately on the knowledge, ("it's a discrimination issue, not a privacy issue") and yes you can sue them for it, but in practice such suits are expensive to bring and difficult to win.

And so it went, for the half of the book I got through before putting it down in frustration. The last straw was Jarvis citing what he calls [Eric] Schmidt's Commandment ("If you have something that you don't want anybody to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it") and -- rather than even suggesting that context might conceivably be relevant, simply declares "He's right, though" and moves on.

The public discussion of how digital technology is changing concepts of privacy and sharing needs more nuanced, complex thought and less glib certainty. Public Parts is a spectacular failure at delivering that. show less

The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print and Its Lessons for the Age of the Internet, by Jeff Jarvis, is a wonderful history of the print era and a thought-provoking discussion of what it can mean for our current age.

The Gutenberg Parenthesis is the period from the time of the creation of type in the west until the release of the first public browser, Netscape Navigator. The beginning point is pretty understandable, the end point serves as the point at which the internet became easily show more navigable for the general public, so it makes sense as well. The middle section is essentially the history of that period as it pertains to communication and print. I was a little surprised just how interesting it was, not that I expected boring. But making connections between events and the role of print and mass (such as it was) communication was intriguing.

In an interview Jarvis mentions that the new age is very much like the age(s) before the Gutenberg press, namely more conversational and collaborative while having fewer gatekeepers. In making the comparison I think it needs to be pointed out that even with the similarities what happened between the two has, and will continue to have, an impact that makes a simplistic comparison misleading. I'm not accusing Jarvis of that but it is a caution that should be front of mind.

He also made an interesting comment that, the more I think about it, makes sense. He talks about how it wasn't the nailing to the door the ability to print and distribute text that made Luther's stance so powerful. This, of course, led to the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. Then in his highlighting of the internet as giving voices that have always been present but ignored he likens #BlackLivesMatter as a parallel to the Reformation and the January 6 insurrection as a parallel to the Counter-Reformation. In other words, when more people have an avenue for their voices to be heard, those in power, the gatekeepers, fear losing their unwarranted privilege and respond. I find this an idea worth considering.

One thing he points out is that while things seem to be happening quickly, we should consider that it might not be as quick as we think or fear. He uses the long timeline from Gutenberg to Netscape to highlight the many changes that took place. I agree with the general idea, but that doesn't negate the possibility that things are still happening fairly quickly. In other words, what took 75 years within the parenthesis may, for example, take only 15 years now. Word travels much faster, as well as humans themselves travelling much faster. So while we may indeed be panicking too much and too soon, we can't look to the previous timeline too much as a guide for calming ourselves.

I would recommend this to readers concerned about how and/or whether we need to censor or heavily police the internet as well as anyone simply interested in the topic of communication, particularly print, through the ages.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less

This Kindle single provides a short history of Gutenberg's invention of the printing press, drawing parallels between his initial business and how the printing press revolutionized every area of human endeavor and Silicon Valley tech start-ups and how we are currently going through a similar revolution with the Internet. At the end, Jarvis offers a persuasive argument for protecting the openness and public nature of the Internet, since we still cannot predict what revolutionary changes it show more will bring about in human civilization, just as in the early days of the printing press, no one could foresee that it would power the Reformation, enable the rise of modern science and create entirely new professions. It's an entertaining and informative read (about 20 minutes) that will be of interest to anyone who cares about books, technology or entrepreneurship. show less

It's difficult to remember the Internet before Google. In just over ten years, the little company begun in a Menlo Park, California garage has grown into a globally-known giant. Its name has become a common verb. Its search engine is the world's primary link to exploring the Web. Some of its freely-shared tools have replaced resources that seemed indispensable a short time ago, and its other applications may be destined to do the same: Google Maps, Google Earth, Google documents, Chrome, show more G-Mail, Google Scholar, Picasa, and on and on. Google tools are certainly part of my daily life.

What made Google an unrivaled success in such a short time? How can other companies survive in a Google world? Media writer and blogger Jeff Jarvis thinks the best way to adapt to this tumultuous new world is to emulate the giant. In whichever industry, business, or organization you might be involved, Jarvis suggests you ask yourself the same question: "What would Google do? How might Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin approach your circumstance?

In What Would Google Do?, Jarvis presents his case in two parts. In the first half of the book, he describes the Google model as a means of explaining its success. Google seeks simplicity and effective results. It gives its products away, knowing well-used tools will keep people coming back for more. In many ways, Google offers itself as a platform for other people's creativity, realizing that people prefer controlling, manipulating, and tweaking the tools they use. Its corporate culture has been cited as a model for nurturing ideas, research (backed up by arguably the best data crunching on earth), and deployment. Even Google's apparent contradictions (e.g., a corporate giant with a start-up's metality, tight-lipped projects with a freeware face) add to its success.

With the Google approach described in the first half, Jarvis runs down a checklist of specific industries in the second half. He applies the Google philosophy to each. It's harsh at times, but the approach seems appropriate in the competitive business world. I found it intriguing, for example, each time he urged companies to step back and ask themselves what business they are in. Take newspapers. Are they in business to sell newspapers? Seems obvious, right? Are they stuck with newspaper or might they be in business to sell news -- regardless the medium? Perhaps they do best selling advertisements? How can they best supply an audience to their advertisers? Another example: airlines. Do airlines fly airplanes ... or move people? Companies should take a hard look at their defining product focus its resources there. If serving people is crucial to its bottom line, then it jolly well better offer quality customer service.

Jarvis also suggested being open to change and, if necessary, radical change. If a company's future lies in completely ripping apart and restructuring its product, it must do so. Hesitation could doom the company. Why? Because if there's a better way to do something, someone will eventually do it. Better you than a competitor, don't you think?

Jarvis gets wobbly with some of the industries. He's not equally familiar with all of them, but nevertheless tries to apply Google principles with mixed results.

The tumultuous changes he predicts/advocates was making me a bit wobbly by the end of the book, in fact. Every revolution he discussed could be imagined at the ground level as uprooted careers and job displacements for many people. Millions of them. I'm not saying Jarvis is wrong. He may be quite right. I just hope the ride into the Googlification of all business isn't as devastating to as many people as it seems. This was a provocative book.

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