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Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob

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In Against the Machine, Lee Siegel has written a devastating critique of the Internet--its destructive side and how it is adversely reshaping our thoughts about ourselves, other people, and the world around us.

In "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: "Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming. The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea, Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse. . . . 'We have invented happiness,' say the last men, and they blink."

Siegel believes this "brave new world" is now: On the Internet, he asserts, "you must sound more like everyone else than anyone else is able to sound like everyone else." Such a vapid transvaluation of values, he asserts, has disastrous effects on our culture, our politics, and our psyches.

The Internet, says Siegel, creates a surreal virtual reality "where the rhetoric of democracy, freedom, and access is often a fig leaf for antidemocratic and coercive rhetoric; where commercial ambitions dress up in the sheep's clothing of humanistic values; and were, ironically, technology has turned back the clock from disinterested enjoyment of high and popular art to a primitive culture of crude, grasping self-interest."

In this strange, upside-down world, talent, expertise, and originality have been replaced by popularity, genuine knowledge has been crowded out by information overload, and true democracy has been undermined by the creation of solipsistic egos isolated from social and political structures and vulnerable to demagogic lies and deceit. Thus is fulfilled Nietzsche's prophecy of the advent of the mob-self who denigrates excellence and elevates the ephemeral, the trivial, the banal, and the mediocre.

Against the Machine is a smash-mouth, no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners cautionary tale about the dark side of the Internet. Refusing to be intimidated by pollyannish Internet boosterism, this provocative book dares cry out that the "imperial" Internet has no clothes. In other words, it's "unsafe at any speed."

Siegel's thesis may seem exaggerated, but his hyperbole serves as a needed, and courageous, warning against soceity's increasing reliance upon the Internet.

Lee Siegel is the author of the essay collections Falling Upwards and Not Remotely Controlled. In 2002 he received the National Magazine Award for Reviews and Criticism. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.

This book, as the title suggests, is about the negative and destructive aspects of the Internet. Many of us, even true believers, have always felt instinctively that it was not all good. From the outset it should be noted that cultural critic Lee Siegel is keenly aware of its power. He writes that "the Internet is possibly the most radical transformation of private and public life in the history of humankind." He likens the Internet to the automobile in the 1950's in that it is considered a symbol and an instrument of "freedom, democracy, choice, and access." It was not until the 1960's that the shortcomings and the dangers of the automobile were exposed by Ralph Nadar. Lee Siegel has taken it upon himself to be the Ralph Nadar of the Internet. Although we've heard many of his arguments before, he delivers them with a certain anger, a "rage against the machine."

Siegel opens his discussion with a scene in Starbucks where everyone is sitting speechless - if not on cellphone - in front of their laptops. Everyone is trying to achieve "connectivity" with the World Wide Web. What Siegel sees is disconnectedness and isolation. Social-networking sites, for example, are a contradiction in terms. They are asocial and atomizing. How can members of Facebook and MySpace have thousands of "friends." What are the consequences for real friendships? Siegel asks all the pertinent questions, even though he doesn't have all the answers.

Siegel has a special axe to grind with Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point. He charges that Gladwell has made popularity the sole criterion for success. The Internet is keeping us at the level of high school, where popularity or "page views" is more important than originality or creativity. Webheads strive to be more like everyone else than anyone else. He cites "American Idol" as another example of contemporary mindlessness. The most successful performers are the best imitators.

Siegel wonders what effect 50,000 new blogs daily (presumably this one included) has on our culture. With the shear volume of information, knowledge becomes elusive. It becomes more difficult to separate rumor from truth. Reality shows are staged, some documentaries are staged, how long before the news is staged? Siegel argues that the blogosphere has a deteriorating effect on "fairness, honesty, and accuracy." Webheads will find that many of his arguments are difficult to refute.

As a professional journalist, Siegel laments the disappearance of the editorial standards of traditional print media, even though they too were imperfect. He also denounces the superficial freedom and democracy that the blogosphere claims for itself. Although his sentiments ring true, there is nothing that can or should be done about the electronic mob from above. Cultural gatekeepers are a thing of the past. We can only hope that the great digital unwashed can sort things out from the bottom up, and that truth and justice prevail.

What are the impacts of Internet technologies on culture and sociality? This weighty and timely question is the one this book attempts to address, but it falls short of being a considered, balanced and serious examination of this topic.

The overall tone of this book by disgraced former New Republic editor and blogger Lee Siegel is of a personal critique against the twinning of digital environments and commerce. Some of its best points are made when Siegel demonstrates his capacity to think deeply on the issues he is concerned about. Sadly, these parts of the book are rare and for this reason, among others, this book is not for use by serious scholars of digital ontology or of the consequences of the digitization of human life.

The book raises interesting points about the performance of privacy online, the rise of the importance of information for its own sake and the popularity contest that is the blogosphere. However, the often snarky tone and rather blatant one-sided presentations leech Mr. Siegel's arguments of their ability to make a difference in the discourse of what the Internet's impacts are now and for the future. The most egregious problem the book has is its reification of its topic center. Mr. Siegel writes about "The Internet" as if the global digital network were a single person, with independent volition and agency. He blames the Internet for several consequences of 21st century life, forgetting as he does so that the larger western culture is the real root and agent of those issues. At several points and most notably in part two, he presents arguments about mass culture, high and low culture, the rise of rationalized individuality, etcetera that suggest that the cultural and social impoverishment and bastardization he speaks of are new to modern life and that the Internet is to blame. He does not exhibit any awareness of the large cadre of philosphers and scholars who have written about these topics for the last few hundred years, since the dawn of industrialization (Theodor Adorno comes to mind as just one example).

While this book is supposed to be a single cohesive book, at times it reads more like an edited collection of opinion essays written at different periods in Mr. Siegel's career, with the tone switching from personal and casual, with self-references and contractions, to third person and serious. Admittedly, if one knows Mr. Siegel's past history of digital participation, the slant in the book becomes glaringly obvious and the reader is left to wonder if the tone and overarching message would have been different if the blogosphere had been kinder to the man? Do read this book if you are interested in the impacts of digital culture on humanity, but expect to be more entertained then enlightened. And given Mr. Siegel's diatribes against exactly this outcome in modern public culture, one is left to wonder if this is deliberate on his part? An ultimate proving of his point?

This book is a quick read - sadly, that is its only virtue. It was a good idea, to examine the hazards of becoming a society of entertainment consumers and not a society of producers and creative thinkers. Mr. Siegel's real argument seems to be with capitalism itself, but most of his criticism in Against the Machine is directed at those who make money via the Internet. Mr. Siegel makes a lot of claims in this book, but effective claims need the support of evidence, and the author has little more than anecdotal evidence based on his own limited observations. He rambles considerably and, at times, his claims are completely outlandish. Examples:
* He gets off to a bad start in the introduction, where he points out that motor vehicle fatalities in the 1960s reached 50,000 per year, but that "people stopped dying on the road in staggering numbers" when automakers became "safety-conscious." Except that in 2007, over 41,000 people died in motor vehicle crashes. How is 50,000 deaths "staggering" but 41,000 acceptable?
* Mr. Siegel writes, "Ten years ago, the space in a coffeehouse abounded in experience. Now that social space has been contracted into isolated points of wanting..." I'm not sure where the author hangs out, but my local cafes and restaurants practically roar with the sound of conversation.
* The author makes considerable criticism of Bill Gates. He conveniently avoids mentioning the thousands of lives that have been saved through the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
* Mr. Siegel hates the distribution of pornography online. Fair enough, I'm not wild about it either. But he makes a simplistic argument that avoids First Amendment complexities. He also brazenly writes, "...your immersion in this online world of forbidden images takes place on your home computer..." Right! It only takes place on your home computer if you seek it out.
* This is how the author describes shopping in a bricks-and-mortar store: "meeting someone new, running into a friend, daydreaming, talking on your cellphone while you browse through the aisles." When I go shopping, I experience crowded parking lots, being jostled by rude shoppers (many of whom are too wrapped up in cell phone conversations), and being insulted by rude cashiers. I'd love to find Mr. Siegel's magical store.
* The author doesn't seem to realize that personal ads and auctions and garage sales were around long before the Internet, judging from his hatred of Match.com and eBay.
* Mr. Siegel describes an actress pretending to be an emotionally scarred teen on YouTube and equates this with George W. Bush's distortions about WMD's in Iraq. To Mr Siegel, every slight is a grievous tragedy.
* Near the end of the book, the author writes that "you are stigmatized as being elitist and antidemocratic...every time you criticize the Internet..." I've heard many public and private individuals criticize the Internet without being labeled elitist or antidemocratic.
Overall, Mr. Siegel seems too lazy, too emotional and too out of touch to prepare a reasoned, mature argument. His complaints are so generic, it's often not even clear what his real argument is. He treats the Internet as some malicious entity, instead of a tool that can be used for malicious purposes by some individuals. He had a good opportunity with this book, and wasted it. Don't waste your time reading Against the Machine.

This is a book which can help most of us think about what we are doing when we give so much of our time to the Internet.
It is a harsh critique of the Internet world and culture focusing on the negative consequences of the endlessly open and on- line world.
It laments the decline in standards of cultural criticism, journalistic quality. It examines the effect on the psychology and personal lives of those involved in the endless game of self- selling and self -promotion which much Internet Activity is.
It talks about the way self- expression has become a substitute for true creative and imaginative work.
It speaks about the obesity of the world of information which has made information a substitute for true - knowledge.
It details the way the Commercial and Corporate have driven out independent sources of Authority and Opinion.
It in doing this says little about the new worlds in learning opened up to many by the Internet. Nor does it point the way the whole question of priority and value , of creating and transmitting higher culture and meaning may be achieved.
It to my mind raises in a serious and troublesome way the question of whether or not the whole Internet Enterprise may be a backward step for Mankind, whether in racing forward we have assurred ourselves of going down culturally and aesthetically.
This work poses real questions to all of those who give much of our time to the Internet.

Following the Cult of the Amateur, Siegel gives us visions of an eletronic mob draining away imagination, fostering totalitarianism, corrupting our souls. Much is on point: the internet only fosters self expression(think of the old joke about the thing everyone has) but self expression is not imagination and creation; attention is now a "new type of income" , with life being just as Zappa predicted, like high school, a contest judged by popularity , not talent(think of how much we see on the web about voting for this or that or the most viewed of this or that); contempt for the truth and admiration for the blurring of fact and falsity(think You Tube and Winkapedia); and is a sap, fronting for evil corporate interests(joy by bloggers over book reviews being dumped by newspapers is foolish; Corporate America wants fewer sources of true authority, the better to exploit us; Oliver Stone, are you listening?) Some stuff is a sounding of an alarm where there is no fire(Amazon reviews are bad, catering to egos, causing people to buy more books). Even if so, commerce is not bad, it just is, using whatever it can. The sci-fi part, the real tingle ,the back of your hair standing on end stuff (and the book's best writing) though is on how the web does not enhance a life but becomes a life. Once you are on it, you are, like a drugged addict, compelled to go to another web site, not click off the laptop and go for a walk, read a book, make love, sit and think. Siegel will take incoming for his book(nice and short) but it is interesting and well written. A mob? Let's hope not.

The author is bothered by the ability of web users to express opinions without being "recognized" experts. This does not prevent him from expression opinions without any apparent experience in philosophy, psychology or cultural evolution. From my 25 years in the computer business and an MA in psychology, I don't take much stock in his opinions. A publisher felt otherwise and made a gamble that people would also be interested. By no means am I claiming that the author does not have the right to publish his opinions or that people have the right to agree or disagree. I picked out two or three of the points as worth discussion at some other place. I'm temped to resell the book and recover some of my money. But I guess I'll add it to my library under "Smoke" as in "full of"... Oh yes, other than the books and people he ravages (The book is for profit, after all.) there are no references to other experts or studies. He likes "some," "most," and "many" when making his sweeping claims.

As we study the impact of the Internet in all of its aspects, Siegel is a good balance for the many highly positive and laudatory works available. Many readers may find Against the Machine more of a rant than an analysis; if, however, you find it an attractive rant, this may be the book you are seeking to bring to a head all of your own doubts and fears about the impact of the Internet. While ostensibly intended as a criticism of Internet 2.0, usually defined as the interactive portions of the Internet, Against the Machine reprises all the familiar criticisms of Internet 1.0, the Internet, as we once knew it. This book could be useful to many, but it is the sort of work that will divide any audience into fiercely partisan groups, either "for" or "against" the Internet.

For a full review see Interface, Volume 8, Issue 5.

Man, I had high hopes for this book. Very high. Siegel had a great piece in the NY Times a few weeks ago, so I ordered Against the Machine thinking I'd get more of his shrewd analysis of large scale shifts in our culture (see Vico reference in article), and reconciling technology and the internet against them. Against the Machine is exactly the opposite. It is inert. Yes, it is a spirited piece of well written criticism. Yes it is burning. But garbage on fire, with a beautiful glow, is still garbage.

Against the Machine argues that the internet is an undemocratic collection of detritus, at best. Overly commercialized, underdone on any actual expertise. He praised other forms of media, like a newspaper, saying, "it's a loose collection of individual minds that, because of their qualities of difference from each other - differences in knowledge, talent, responsibility, status, authority, ego - occupy in the aggregate a space somewhere between subjectivity and objectivity."

That's a beautiful line, but how is that not the internet? And how is Against the Machine not myopic?

I saw an ad for this book in the NYT Sunday Book Review and the subject immediately captivated my attention. Working for a large technology company with a job driving digital marketing strategy, the topic of some of the negative consequences of the internet is a topic worth discussing. I feel that several of Siegel's core arguments are very fair, reasonable and have a great degree of accuracy. However, I don't believe he is all that effective going beyond the surface area of his arguments.

In some sense, based on Siegel's premise that anyone who has anything the least bit critical about the internet is marginalized and the mainstream press is unwilling to genuinely to engage in anything but the internet is only good, it is not surprising that he screams pretty loudly some of his opinions. He frankly doesn't believe anyone will listen unless someone is loud and bold.

I certainly do agree with some of his core sentiments, noted by another reviewer: "where the rhetoric of democracy, freedom, and access is often a fig leaf for antidemocratic and coercive rhetoric; where commercial ambitions dress up in the sheep's clothing of humanistic values; and were, ironically, technology has turned back the clock from disinterested enjoyment of high and popular art to a primitive culture of crude, grasping self-interest." Much of the above is a good characterization of an enormous amount of content on the web in such large reach places like YouTube and Wikipedia, to the mass of blogs that proliferate. Is the ability of people to communicate, collaborate and share information across boundaries powerful and beneficial? Certainly. Does someone putting a camera on some form of America's Funniest Home Video and posting it on the web make it good? More beneficial and less inane to society than it being shown on TV because it is the internet? Hardly.
Do the most ardent supporters of Wikipedia really believe it is apolitical and not censored -- the same criticism they level at mainstream media and profess the web is above. Definitely no. Does this make the web bad? No.

Yes, the web may be the most profound tool unleashed on humanity since the printing press. Certainly it has, is and will have a profoundly positive impact on people and the world for generations to come. However, this does not mean that the changes unleashed are only positive or there has, is and will be a vocal group of individuals that lead this "coercive and anti-democratic rhetoric" to suppress those who question the "all is good" mentality.