How to Fix the Future
Andrew Keen
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
How to Fix the Future
Andrew Keen
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
The title is a bit off. Forget the future. The book is a courageous attempt to offer some constructive solutions to a world already filled with monoliths that make the Microsoft of the 1990s, whose hegemony we once feared so much that the government saw fit to break it into pieces, look like a humble Etsy vendor.
Into this maelstrom steps Andrew Keen, a tech commentator who never drank the Silicon Valley Kool-Aid. In three earlier books he provided an ongoing, scathing critique of tech evangelism. His scepticism now looks prescient: he understood the significance of what was happening earlier than most. With his new book, Keen switches from sarcasm to a kind of pragmatic optimism. Our digital future can be shaped in more humane directions, he argues. But for that to happen we need to be realistic about the scale of the challenge, to learn from history and accept that there are no magic bullets or technological fixes. Like Churchill, he offers mostly blood, sweat and tears; but at least he has a programme of what needs to be done..
Unlike some recent anti-tech jeremiads, the author portrays our current Internet dystopia in a larger context of human history.
Keen, who has spent his career warning of the dangers of the Internet, takes a more positive turn in this complex yet accessible study. Comparing our current situation to the Industrial Revolution, he stresses the importance of keeping humanity at the center of technology..
One of his most intriguing arguments compares the power of the US tech giants today and the motor industry in the 1950s.
Keen’s bright overview includes conversations with innovators in Estonia and Singapore—international hubs of digital reform—who are working to re-establish trust and agency in cyberspace life.