World Without Mind

World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech by Franklin Foer, 232 pages

In World Without Mind, journalist Franklin Foer identifies three distinct but overlapping threats posed by Silicon Valley.  The first, and most sensational, is the product of the utopian dreams of the tech gurus, who imagine that infallible algorithms can be used to replace fallible human judgments, ushering in a world where supposedly free choices have been eliminated in favor of mechanical, "scientific" decision-making.  The second, and most dear to the author, is the destruction of the old media by the new, particularly the near-death of quality journalism and the rise of click-bait which is tailored to attract the maximum number of views by gaming the algorithms which determine what people "want" to see.  The third is the bridge between the first two, the domination of our media and economic consumption by a few monopolistic corporations that attempt, as much as possible and more than we might like to imagine, to make our decisions for us.

It is easy to dismiss World Without Mind as the nostalgic whine of a loser in the tech race, a journalist who, like many before him, found that progress had rendered him irrelevant.  This is not helped by the fact that Foer is himself a prisoner of Whig history, freely bandying about cliched nonsense like "We consider conformism to be spiritually and morally deadening."  At one point he flatly asserts that "when writing was professionalized in the late nineteenth century, the culture deepened," without support or explanation and against the plain evidence of our senses.  It is ameliorated somewhat by his open admission that he has several axes to grind.  More importantly, his prescription that, in tandem with the use of antitrust laws to break up Big Tech, ordinary people begin to treat their independence from technology as a health issue even as they flaunt it as a status symbol, an approach consciously modelled after the remarkably successful healthy eating and organic food movements, is at least interesting.  It is, however, sadly reminiscent of similar attempts to wean Americans from their TVs, and cynics will be quick to suggest that it lacks the organic food craze's feature of being something big corporations can easily profit from indulging.

Utopia Is Creepy

Utopia Is Creepy and Other Provocations by Nicholas Carr, 342 pages

The promise of the Digital Age, restated again and again, is the liberation of the individual human being from economics, politics, and even matter itself.  Yet according to Nicholas Carr the reality is "not transcendence but withdrawal", a liberation from society that leaves the individual isolated, trapped in a solipsistic hall of mirrors.  Utopia Is Creepy collects the best of Carr's RoughType blog as well as some aphoristic tweets and longer pieces.

Instead of a world in which economics have been transcended, Carr foresees a world in which every human interaction has been commodified, and every experience manufactured.  The difference between the resulting artificial culture and the old organic culture is analogous to the difference between learning to play a guitar and learning to play Guitar Hero.  Correspondingly, politics are impoverished as the soundbite gives way to the tweet, knowledge as the trivial becomes more and more indistinguishable from the profound, and humanity as personality is reduced to a data set.

Carr is no Luddite - to the contrary, he is very aware of the positive benefits of new technologies, but he is also aware of their limitations, and the limitations of the men who make them.  More importantly, he is conscious of their power to change our perceptions of ourselves and our relationships to others in unexpected ways.  The book has the flaws to be expected of any collection of blog posts - not only are some no longer topical, the reader may sometimes wish that Carr would elaborate on a point or draw out the consequences of his conclusions, only to be frustrated by the concessions to digital attention spans.  Yet the short pieces on diverse topics also provide an ideal vehicle for Carr's combination of insight and humor, which in turn makes Utopia Is Creepy pleasurable as well as provocative.

The Circle

The Circle by Dave Eggers, 491 pages

First book I've read by Dave Eggers. It clipped along at a steady pace, and it evoked more <negative, but in a good way> emotion in me than anything I've read in some time. It was our book discussion title for the month and we had a heated and opinionated discussion.
The story revolves around Mae, who has gotten a job at a company called the Circle, thanks to her friend Annie, who is a top employee there. Basically, this is a story about technology and the Internet growing to be an all-encompassing force more powerful than the government. It quickly works to be a part of every single thing people do, and it also gains control of every aspect of people's lives. It has all your information and is constantly monitoring you, suggesting things for you, but more importantly, watching you. If everyone is always being watched, there is complete accountability. No more crime, etc. etc. etc. The peak of this idea is transparency, where an individual chooses to have a camera attached to their person almost 24/7. It can only be turned off in the bathroom (and then only the sound) and after 10pm.
This book was scary because we are already heading so much in this direction with Google and the like. The character of Mae was such a weak and spineless female, willing to do any and everything to keep her job. They realize this and use her as an example to teach with and eventually, essentially as their pawn. There were so many points in this story where I wanted Mae to just stand up and scream, "Enough is enough!" but it never happened. This was exactly what kept the story moving along, however.
An intense and emotional read, that will have you wanting to rip your hair out at parts. If things ever get to where this book goes, I hope that I will have the resolve to resist. I hope you will too.

How to Make Your Cat an Internet Celebrity

How to Make Your Cat an Internet Celebrity: A Guide to Financial Freedom by Patricia Carlin with
photography by Dustin Fenstermacher, 127 pages

Well, the gist of this book is right there in the title: it's all about the ways in which you can make your cat a viral video sensation. This short and ridiculously funny book goes through the different types of marketable cat (cute and sweet, lazy bum, and complete moron, for example) and the ways in which you can best exploit their traits. Along the way, we learn about the importance of the American Girl store to cat videos and how to make those videos show up in any Google keyword search (hint: it probably helps if you name your cat after a much-gossiped-about celebrity a la Lindsay Lohan).

This snarky book manages to skewer celebrity tabloids, cat owners, and the cat-obsessed internet without being mean about it. I highly recommend it as a source of humor, though not as a pet care book (which is where this one is cataloged).

P.S. The photos are great, though the photographer's name is a bit suspect. Fenstermacher? That's got to be a pseudonym.

Notes from the Internet Apocalypse

Notes from the Internet Apocalypse by Wayne Gladstone
216 Pages

The Internet is gone, suddenly and completely.  Society is lost and trying to adapt in a world where information is no longer just a click away.   Cats are forced to do tricks over and over because there is no youtube.  Pornography has a renaissance on Times Square and one psychic librarian has begun answering reference questions for a fee.   The main character Gladstone has teamed up with two friends to find the internet again and is soon the center of controversy when he is identified as the Internet Messiah and people turn to him as either the savior of the internet or the man that will return the scourge of life.

There is lots of humor about how people cope with the loss of something that is a part of their daily lives but it does begin to wear thin about 2/3's into the book.  The underlying theme of the satire is how people have depended upon the shallow interface of the internet to fill in a lack of interpersonal relationships and after it is gone, they are at sea as how to interact with the world again.