The Internet Is Not the Answer Author:Andrew Keen In 2014, the world wide web will be a quarter of a century old. There is no doubt that the web, and the new businesses it has enabled, has transformed the world forever. But, according to celebrated technology writer Andrew Keen, this disruption has had some extremely pernicious effects. In The Internet Is Not the Answer, a sharp, witty polemic,... more » Keen argues succinctly and passionately that the web has so far been on balance a disaster for everyone?except a tiny a group of young, privileged, white male Silicon Valley multi-millionaires.
Rather than making us wealthier, the unregulated digital market 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. 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. So what is to be done? We are twenty-five years in to the age of the internet, and the next twenty-five are key, as Keen explains, as by 2039, everyone alive will be online. In The Internet Is Not the Answer, he systematically explains what must be done in order to change what is increasingly becoming a tool of oppression, normativity, and big business into a tool that fosters art, small business, innovation, and personal freedom.« less