While I confess that I didn't agree with much of this book, I found it to be fascinating.

Foer basically argues that companies that are dominating data collection (namely Facebook, Google, and Amazon) are monopolies because they are able to use that data to (unfairly) compete. He is critical of the fact that government has allowed these monopolies to evolve and that consumers are making a bargain with the devil, trading off freedom for efficiency.

What he fails to do, to my satisfaction, is indicate what we should do about it. He seems to have some vague ideas about the government's ability to protect privacy and that if the upper echelons of society would all just elevate reading on paper (newspapers, magazines, books) to the level it deserves, it would somehow permeate the rest of society. He has a lot more faith in the political machine than I do.

Personally, it seems to me that the horse is out of the barn, and there's going to be no reining it in. Foer seems to imply that no company will ever compete with the Google, Facebook, and Amazon triad because only they have the computing power necessary to crunch all the data, and they are the only ones who have collected all the data to crunch. While right now, the latter may be true, I am pretty sure computing power will continue to get cheaper and more accessible. Perhaps companies will form data conglomerates to pool their data for better leverage. I believe a lot of this data is already available for sale, so not sure it's as proprietary as Foer implies.

However, I loved the way Foer makes his case. The book is filled with passages that make you think and interwoven with historical comparisons that provide context. He strikes me as pretty biased in his thought process (the guy was an editor), but if you take it as a long opinion piece, it's a good read. ( )

This is a reasonably quick survey of the effects of internet technology on journalism. It's so new and pervasive, it's hard to wrap one's mind around the topic. Foer does a good job of reviewing the angles. Stewart Brand and the utopian 1960s... I don't think Steve Jobs got much discussion here, but anyway... there really was a kind of starry-eyed idealism at the beginning, and even still. The wisdom of crowds, indeed! The situation has hardly improved in the few years since the book was written... polarizing misinformation is more rampant than ever!

To what extent government regulation can steer culture... well, it certainly seems to! I don't think Foer discussed cable TV and FCC deregulation. He does discuss monopolies and some of the nuances involved in drawing bounds.... efficiency vs fairness, for example.

Stepping back a bit... authoritarianism seems on the rise all around the world. Cornucopians seem undeterred, but there sure does seem to be a growing snowball of environmental stress. The internet could topple under its own weight.. not just some big data breach as Foer envisions, but more like getting drowned in its own sludge: so much noise from advertising and garbage information that the thing becomes useless, just not worth the bother. But look e.g. at Brexit and Russian gas... folks in the U.K. ... yeah, paying your smart phone monthly service is one thing, but devices don't last forever and get fancier and more expensive... hard to say.

Anyway, this is a perfectly good stroll around one of the most crucial battlefields of our time. ( )

Much as the author does in the beginning of World Without Mind, which is interestingly split between being opinion and being investigative journalism, I’ll admit my own pre-conceptions going in. Namely, I don’t require any convincing that Amazon and Facebook are evil, and, given my recent suspicions, I would require little to nudge my opinion of Google over the same line. So, of course, this book quickly slid to the top of my to-read list given the description.

The author, too, admits his bias at the beginning of the work. He was an editor for the New Republic who was displaced when the magazine was purchased by a Silicon Valley investor who had come from Facebook and, so we are told, sold the magazine’s soul of liberal tradition in the interest of clicks. To Foer’s credit, he admits the lens of frustration through which he writes early. I think that he underestimates the level at which it colors his work.

This book is curious, equal parts history, op-ed, and social theory. He has done his research on the foundations of Google, Facebook and Amazon, and he doesn’t mince words in condemning their questionable practices. My hesitation was in the missing sources in his work, but I read this an audiobook, which doesn’t really lend itself to referencing footnotes or endnotes as a format. So, I honestly don’t know if these are present or not. If not, then the journalistic integrity is obviously called into question.

What becomes at times odd, however, is Foer’s digression into what I can only describe as conspiracy theory. He paints a dystopian undercurrent to our present, theorizing how Facebook and Google conspire to be the sole entities to possess all of the data of our personal lives, using it to manipulate us into thinking and feeling how they want us to think and feel, and to purchase what they want us to purchase. I don’t think that he’s entirely wrong. His condemnation of the algorithm in particular, however, paints more of an image of an eccentric professor ranting against an evil that only he can see more than it does a serious journalist giving us facts in order to inform our choices.

His denunciation of Amazon is more focused on corrupt business practices than the other giants in his crosshairs. Again, I miss sources, but the history he outlines of Bezos’ empire is a damning portrait of a power-hungry business intent upon devouring any competitor in order to become the only source from which we can ever purchase anything.

Foer also spends some time speaking of the fate of the writer and the de-valuation of intellectual property in the Internet age. His feeling is that the dorm-room philosophy of tech giants is to abolish all individual credit to any writer as part of the process of implementing the hive mind. For all of his valuable points as to how writers are continually not paid their worth, and to how print journalism in general is overwhelmed by less intellectual forms of media, this smacks of paranoia and the curmudgeonly punches of one done wrong.

World Without Mind is thought-provoking for all of its shortcomings. While the concluding call to action falls flat, I do find myself examining the trust that I place in Google in particular (my own condemnation of Facebook and Amazon were solidified long ago), and I have found myself beginning to change some of the choices that I have made in how I engage these services.

Anyone who uses social media and e-commerce without questioning would be served at some level by this book. My concern is that Foer is unable to detach from his personal bias sufficiently to present an argument in a compelling enough way to sway the opinion of the majority of readers. I can’t help but feel that there’s a darker truth under the surface of our daily interactions with the Internet that Foer is sensing and the rest of us are downplaying. Hopefully that is my own conspiratorial imagination at work.

This review originally published at https://www.unobtrusivelucidity.com/2018/08/world-without-mind-review/ ( )

Franklin Foer writes about the idealism of tech companies and the ways in which their idealism is doing harm. Specifically he's worried about the depressed value of knowledge and the degrading impact of the Internet on journalism and writing. The book certainly makes one uneasy about big tech. Foer is very readable, although sometimes he doesn't quite make his point. ( )

"Google, Apple, Facebook e Amazon diventano simili all’Italia, un Paese in cui i meccanismi del potere non sono mai chiari, in cui le regole esistono ma non vengono mai spiegate in modo convincente."

Questa è la frase che mi ha di più colpito leggendo questo interessante libro. L'autore è chiaramente contro i mostri tecnologici che si stanno impadronando delle nostre vite, non tanto per quello che fanno e che sono, quanto per quello che potranno diventare in un futuro che forse è già arrivato. Se le cose stanno così allora potremo essere certi che nessuno potrà salvarci da loro, così come niente e nessuno potrà mai aiutare il nostro Bel Paese a cambiare.

L'autore del libro è uno che le cose le conosce bene sia dal dentro che dal di fuori. Il suo libro è ricco di note e di richiami per confronti, verifiche ed approfondimenti. I materiali sui quali poggia le sue argomentazioni sono tanti, sia storici che culturali. Tutto nasce comunque da quel sano, invincibile ed imbattibile individualismo che caratterizza da sempre l'uomo.

Conoscere, esplorare, migliorare non solo, ma anche sfruttare, speculare arricchirsi. Quando l'individualismo diventa collettivismo, quando il realismo viene trasformato in idealismo, se quest'ultimo poi diventa ideologia, mescolata tanto alla politica quanto al mercato, allora le cose si complicano davvero. Tutto ciò mi sembra stia accadendo, sia accaduto e il peggio potrebbe ancora arrivare, con FAGA - Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon.

Cosa propone, allora, Foer? Non vedo soluzioni, nonostante tutto quello che lui scrive, vero e certo. Così come fino a questo momento in cui scrivo questo post, gli alleati innaturali per contratto, Leghisti e Cinque Stelle, stiano cercando di mettere ordine in un Paese in cui meccanismi non sono mai stati chiari, alla stessa maniera i GAF continueranno a fare il bello e il cattivo tempo sulla nostra pelle, accumulando ricchezze mai viste prima.

Foer scrive che "secondo uno dei luoghi comuni del nostro tempo, una frase che quando venne pronunciata per la prima volta sembrava un’iperbole, oggi appare azzeccatissima, «i dati sono il nuovo petrolio». «Dati» è una parola incruenta, ma rappresenta qualcosa di piuttosto cruento in un mondo sempre più piatto e liquido.

Si tratta dell’archivio delle nostre azioni: quello che leggiamo, quello che guardiamo, dove ci spostiamo nell’arco di una giornata, quello che compriamo, la nostra corrispondenza, le ricerche che facciamo, i pensieri che iniziamo a scrivere e poi cancelliamo. I dati illustrano il modo in cui un utente trascorre il tempo in modo forse migliore rispetto a quanto farebbe l’utente stesso, perché non si basano sulla memoria umana.

Sappiamo dove ti trovi, sappiamo dove sei stato e siamo più o meno in grado di sapere a cosa stai pensando. Così pensano le quattro "high tech" mentre manipolano i dati, ci rendono più malleabili, più propensi alla dipendenza, più facili da condizionare. I dati non somigliano al petrolio, perché mentre quest’ultimo è una risorsa limitata, i dati sono rinnovabili all’infinito.

Ecco, questo potranno fare se non facciamo qualcosa. Foer non ce lo dice. Io, nel mio piccolo, continuo a tenere sempre bene a mente l'acronimo che mi inventai quando divenni digitale un quarto di secolo fa: Connessione - Accesso - Controllo (C.A.C.). Ci sono quando ci voglio essere. Anche Amleto credo che avrebbe fatto così, oggi, se al suo tempo avesse avuto Internet. ON sta a OFF come OFF sta a ON. Il resto appartiene all'infinito. ( )