In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • A Prophet for the Digital Heretics:Evgeny Morozov’s Quest to Debunk Silicon Valley Solutionism
  • Bartholomew Thanhauser (bio)
Evgeny Morozov, To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism (Public Affairs, 2013), 432 pp.

Is it possible to be addicted to the Internet? Evgeny Morozov seems to think so. His laptop has an easily removable Wi-Fi card and his home has a safe with a timed combination lock into which he can throw all Internet enablers: phone, Wi-Fi card, router cable. But even that is not enough. Necessity breeds innovation, and Morozov has found a way to use screwdrivers to pry the lock apart. Now, the screwdrivers go into the safe, as well.

On the surface, these probably seem like the actions of an eccentric, albeit highly determined, man. And to those who believe the Internet is an inherently positive force, Morozov probably is exactly that. However, to those who take a more critical view of the Internet, and more broadly, our society’s discourses on technology, Evgeny Morozov and his book, To Save Everything, Click Here, offer a powerful, paradigm-shifting rebuttal. Although heavy-handed at times, Morozov provides an intelligent shot of cynicism into the way we view, use, and discuss technology.

Morozov, a self-described “digital heretic,”1 offers two main critiques to articulate his worldview. The first critique takes aim at what he calls Silicon Valley’s “solutionism,” which is the idea that technology, or more specifically, the Internet, can be the solution to all the world’s problems. Global-warming? Ruthless autocrats? Endangered naked mole rats? Don’t worry, there’s an app for all of these problems, and Facebook, Google, and others are building it. Morozov’s second critique is of solutionism’s spawn—“Internet-centrism”—which is the inescapable (and often detrimental) centrality that Silicon Valley solutionists attach to the Internet. The Internet is the square-peg-in-the-round-hole [End Page 161] that Silicon Valley uses in its endeavors to explain and improve everything.

To Morozov, solutionism and Internet-centrism’s “promise of eternal amelioration” is a “digital straightjacket.”2 Not only does he reject the belief that the two are capable of solving the world’s problems, but he sees this very mindset as dangerous. It warps the role of technology in our lives and re-distributes power in potentially negative ways. It is a mindset that has allowed Silicon Valley to co-opt morality and provide solutions to problems that don’t necessarily exist. Its goal of a “frictionless,” perfectly efficient society is as quixotic as it is harmful; as Morozov writes, “sometimes, imperfect is good enough; sometimes, it’s much better than perfect.”3

Morozov is no Luddite; he does not advocate readers lock their electronics in a safe like he does, much less throw them away. His qualms are not with technology, but with solutionism. He recognizes that technology is often a positive force. It is only in casting it as a panacea that our intellectual curiosity deadens, our agency weakens, and our understanding of the human condition becomes tenuous. To Morozov, the Internet is not a solution, but a series of tubes and wires.

This is a powerful statement, and Morozov gives it further potency by grounding it in history. He argues that, although the Internet has changed our lives in numerous ways, the belief that it will transform us into different humans living in different societies is a kind of “geek creation myth.” He compares the Internet to past inventions, noting that “almost every new invention is met with great expectations that it will promote human understanding.”4 Paved roads, telegraphs, radios, and televisions were all predicted to erase cultural differences, end conflict, and eliminate human misunderstandings—and none lived up to these monumental predictions. He uses the term “epochalism” (one of the seemingly hundreds of neologisms in the book) to describe the radical proclamations that follow each new invention, and he views Silicon Valley’s idolization of the Internet as simply the most recent incarnation of epochalism.

Furthermore, he charges that this current epochalism fuels misconceptions about the Internet. One by one, he works to discredit each misconception. He argues that...

pdf

Share