Keen still has his edge

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My Observer review of Andrew Keen’s new book, The Internet is Not the Answer:

Andrew Keen – like many who were involved in the net in the early days – started out as an internet evangelist. In the 1990s he founded a startup in the Bay Area and drank the Kool-Aid that fuelled the first internet bubble. But he saw the light before many of us, and rapidly established himself as one of the net’s early contrarians. His first book, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture, was a lacerating critique of the obsession with user-generated content which characterised the early days of web 2.0, and whenever conference organisers wanted to ensure a bloody good row, Andrew Keen was the man they invited to give the keynote address.

If his new book is anything to go by, Keen has lost none of his edge, but he’s expanded the scope and depth of his critique. He wants to persuade us to transcend our childlike fascination with the baubles of cyberspace so that we can take a long hard look at the weird, dysfunctional, inegalitarian, comprehensively surveilled world that we have been building with digital tools. In that sense, The Internet Is Not the Answer joins a number of recent books by critics such as Jaron Lanier, Doc Searls, Astra Taylor, Ethan Zuckerman and Nicholas Carr, who are also trying to wake us from the nightmare into which we have been sleepwalking.

Read on

Levelling the playing field

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This morning’s Observer column:

Whenever regulators gather to discuss market failures, the cliche “level playing field” eventually surfaces. When regulators finally get around to thinking about what happens in the online world, especially in the area of personal data, then they will have to come to terms with the fact that the playing field is not just tilted in favour of the online giants, but is as vertical as that rockface in Yosemite that two Americans have finally managed to free climb.

The mechanism for rotating the playing field is our old friend, the terms and conditions agreement, usually called the “end user licence agreement” (EULA) in cyberspace. This invariably consists of three coats of prime legal verbiage distributed over 32 pages, which basically comes down to this: “If you want to do business with us, then you will do it entirely on our terms; click here to agree, otherwise go screw yourself. Oh, and by the way, all of your personal data revealed in your interactions with us belongs to us.”

The strange thing is that this formula applies regardless of whether you are actually trying to purchase something from the author of the EULA or merely trying to avail yourself of its “free” services.

When the history of this period comes to be written, our great-grandchildren will marvel at the fact that billions of apparently sane individuals passively accepted this grotesquely asymmetrical deal. (They may also wonder why our governments have shown so little interest in the matter.)…

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So should it be called Apple Phone Inc?

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Once upon a time, Apple was called Apple Computer Inc. This was partly because the Beatles had a lock on ‘Apple’, but it was also an honest description of the company.

But now? Well, the company still makes computers. (Some very nice ones too.) But consider this:

In the period that ended Dec. 27, Apple sold $51.2 billion worth of iPhones. Those sales comprised nearly 69 percent of the company’s total sales for the quarter — a record portion by a long shot. Indeed, Apple was so successful at selling iPhones during its first fiscal quarter that if it had sold nothing else — no iPads, no Macs, nothing — its total sales would still have been the third highest it had ever recorded.

The commentariat is busy opining that there are dangers in being a one-trick pony — which if course there are. Still, it’s one hell of a pony.

Medium is its own message

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“Rather than casting our writing into the open maelstrom of the internet, Medium provides a sheltered space where writers don’t have to compete with other forms of content. Here, the written word rules, and everyone is an eager reader. If the internet is a city, Medium is a village.”

From an interesting essay by Marius Masalar reflecting on Medium as a publishing platform for writers and bloggers.

So what really lay behind Syriza’s victory?

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Paul Mason has a hunch:

Syriza’s economics people have been crystal clear: they will no longer deal with the Troika (the EU/ECB/IMF body that runs the austerity programme). They will deal as a sovereign country with each institution separately. They argue the Troika itself was illegal.

So there is a real possibility that, as Tsipras annuls austerity this week, the hawks in the ECB – centred on Germany – will threaten to pull the Emergency Lending Assistance that keeps Greek banks afloat.

Right now Syriza’s economics team are trying to mobilise political support to stop this – from Francois Hollande, Matteo Renzi and, I am told, George Osborne. We’ll see.

For now make no mistake: this is going to become about sovereignty and democracy and the soul of the Eurozone.

Yes the Syriza people like to sing the Italian left anthem Bandiera Rossa; but if you could see the young people’s faces as they sing the anthem of ELAS, the resistance movement that defeated the Wehrmacht in 1944, you would understand what drives leftism here.

Note that last paragraph.