Beyond the Valley - How Innovators Around World Are Overcoming Inequality Creating

How to repair the disconnect between designers and users, producers and consumers, and tech elites and the rest of us: toward a more democratic internet.In this provocative book, Ramesh Srinivasan describes the internet as both an enabler of frictionless efficiency and a dirty tangle of politics, economics, and other inefficient, inharmonious human activities. We may love the immediacy of Google search results, the convenience of buying from Amazon, and the elegance and power of our Apple devices, but it's a one-way, top-down process. We're not asked for our input, or our opinions—only for our data. The internet is brought to us by wealthy technologists in Silicon Valley and China. It's time, Srinivasan argues, that we think in terms beyond the Valley.
Srinivasan focuses on the disconnection he sees between designers and users, producers and consumers, and tech elites and the rest of us. The recent Cambridge Analytica and Russian misinformation scandals exemplify the imbalance of a digital world that puts profits before inclusivity and democracy. In search of a more democratic internet, Srinivasan takes us to the mountains of Oaxaca, East and West Africa, China, Scandinavia, North America, and elsewhere, visiting the "design labs” of rural, low-income, and indigenous people around the world. He talks to a range of high-profile public figures—including Elizabeth Warren, David Axelrod, Eric Holder, Noam Chomsky, Lawrence Lessig, and the founders of Reddit, as well as community organizers, labor leaders, and human rights activists.. To make a better internet, Srinivasan says, we need a new ethic of diversity, openness, and inclusivity, empowering those now excluded from decisions about how technologies are designed, who profits from them, and who are surveilled and exploited by them.

List of contents

Introduction
Chapter 1: The Power of Data
Chapter 2: The Social Contract
Chapter 3: Foreclosing the Future
Chapter 4: Disconnection and Connection
Chapter 5: Blind Solutions
Chapter 6: Brave New Digital World
Chapter 7: Cambridge Analytica and Global Disinformation
Chapter 8: The Great Radicalizers
Chapter 9: Bernie is Born
Chapter 10: Digital Wargames: Looking in the Mirror?
Chapter 11: Disrupting Life and Death
Chapter 12: Protecting Work and Workers
Chapter 13: Working Hard, Struggling Harder
Chapter 14: Money For Everybody? Exploring Universal Basic Income
Chapter 15: Leaders and Visions
Chapter 16: Discrimination Technologies
Chapter 17: Keeping it Local--The Power of Community Networks
with Aditi Mehta
Chapter 18: A President's World
Chapter 19: African Technology
Chapter 20: AI in Uganda
Chapter 21: Innovating from the Ground Up in Kenya
Chapter 22: Mobile Power to the People: Indigenous Networks in Mexico
Chapter 23: Blockchain: A Crazy Free-For-All, and Maybe More?
with Adam Reese
Chapter 24: Technology For All
Chapter 25: Educating And Protecting Our Future
Conclusion

About the author

Ramesh Srinivasan is Professor of Information Studies and Design Media Arts at UCLA. He makes regular appearances on NPR, The Young Turks, MSNBC, and Public Radio International, and his writings have been published in the Washington Post, Quartz, Huffington Post, CNN, and elsewhere.

Summary

How to repair the disconnect between designers and users, producers and consumers, and tech elites and the rest of us: toward a more democratic internet.In this provocative book, Ramesh Srinivasan describes the internet as both an enabler of frictionless efficiency and a dirty tangle of politics, economics, and other inefficient, inharmonious human activities. We may love the immediacy of Google search results, the convenience of buying from Amazon, and the elegance and power of our Apple devices, but it's a one-way, top-down process. We're not asked for our input, or our opinions—only for our data. The internet is brought to us by wealthy technologists in Silicon Valley and China. It's time, Srinivasan argues, that we think in terms beyond the Valley.
Srinivasan focuses on the disconnection he sees between designers and users, producers and consumers, and tech elites and the rest of us. The recent Cambridge Analytica and Russian misinformation scandals exemplify the imbalance of a digital world that puts profits before inclusivity and democracy. In search of a more democratic internet, Srinivasan takes us to the mountains of Oaxaca, East and West Africa, China, Scandinavia, North America, and elsewhere, visiting the “design labs” of rural, low-income, and indigenous people around the world. He talks to a range of high-profile public figures—including Elizabeth Warren, David Axelrod, Eric Holder, Noam Chomsky, Lawrence Lessig, and the founders of Reddit, as well as community organizers, labor leaders, and human rights activists.. To make a better internet, Srinivasan says, we need a new ethic of diversity, openness, and inclusivity, empowering those now excluded from decisions about how technologies are designed, who profits from them, and who are surveilled and exploited by them.

Additional text

For an industry that deliberately keeps the focus off of its negative effects, Srinivasan's work is a necessary intervention and critique, while also shining a light on those working to come up with solutions to counteract the pitfalls of a technologically focused world.—Shelf Awareness—
The book's title belies its fierce politics: like Sanders, Srinivasan believes that massive tech companies have grown unaccountably powerful and must be confronted, not courted and appeased as the Democratic Party establishment has done for decades.
—Jacobin—

Product details

• Authors: Douglas Rushkoff, Ramesh Srinivasan, Ramesh/ Rushkoff Srinivasan, Srinivasan Ramesh
• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.09.2020
• EAN: 9780262539609
• ISBN: 978-0-262-53960-9
• No. of pages: 424
• Series: The MIT Press
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > IT, data processing > Data communication, networks; COMPUTERS / Internet / General, TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Social Aspects, Technology: general issues