Where do you want to go today? This slogan/mantra is the centerpiece of a Microsoft advertising campaign and the central dilemma of our times, says technorealist Andrew L. Shapiro in
The Control Revolution, a warning of the potentially dismal consequences of the uninhibited personalization afforded by the Internet. By putting individuals in charge of their own information gathering, Shapiro suggests that we might find ourselves imprisoned within our increasingly narrow choices or "oversteering" into a corporate-controlled Net environment not unlike network television. His aim is to alert us to the problems and help us steer a middle course to fully realize the benefits of worldwide networking.
What will happen to encryption, copyright, and free speech in our brave new world? How can we seize the power of unrestricted choice without giving in to the temptation of ignoring diverse opinions? How will governmental and business authorities respond to these threats to their power? Shapiro addresses these questions and others forcefully and eloquently, offering prescriptions for thoughtful leaders such as limiting certain intellectual property rights to free the market for new operating systems and creating incentives for virtual "public squares" where everyone can have their 15 nanominutes of fame. Thoughtful, entertaining, and substantial, The Control Revolution is essential reading for those charged with creating the future. --Rob Lightner
Noting that the Internet is reshaping society and giving the individual unprecedented power, Shapiro, a Nation contributing editor, lawyer and director of the Aspen Institute Internet Policy Project, offers a sophisticated look at the Net and the ramifications of its current and potential uses. When the first graphical browsers came on the scene and made the Web accessible to anyone with a PC, optimists trumpeted the arrival of an era in which power would flow back to individuals after years of residing with corporations and institutions. Five years later, Shapiro sees that libertarian promise coming to fruition in many ways: day traders are bypassing stockbrokers; persons living under repressive regimes are using the Web to circumvent the Big Lie of state-controlled media; musicians and wordsmiths are self-publishing on the Web. Shapiro celebrates these freedoms, but his book is much more than a breathless booster's vision of digital utopia. Governments and corporations, he notes, are already striking back, and he documents some of the most egregious examples of censorship and attempts by companies to get a choke hold on Net technologies. And, most honestly, he addresses how too much digital autonomy might be harmful to civil society, in his critiques of "The Drudge Factor" (unaccountable pseudojournalism), "friction-free capitalism" (digital commerce freed from the restraints of taxation and regulation) and "push-button politics" (direct, electronic voting by citizens on matters currently decided by elected officials or appointed professionals). With scrupulous documentation and a knowledgeable but unpatronizing tone, Shapiro delivers a penetrating analysis of both the promise and peril of the digital future. (June)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
There are enough Internet books out there to crash Amazon's servers, an explosion of volumes promising untold wealth or documenting the minutiae and mythologies of individual Net companies. For all that, it's surprising so few authors have attempted what writer and lawyer Andrew Shapiro achieves with
The Control Revolution: a comprehensive, sober analysis of how the Internet differs from conventional forms of communication.
Shapiro shares certain core beliefs with some of the Net's earliest and most far-reaching advocates. He approves of the use of "revolution" to describe the Internet's effects, focusing his scope on the increased control afforded to individuals' choices "about intake of news and other information, social interactions, education and work, political life and collective resources." Indeed, he maintains that the "control revolution" can in important ways be compared to the agricultural and industrial revolutions.
But Shapiro parts company with those he labels "Panglossian futurists" on whether such change will be universal or inevitable. Building on the work of communications theorists such as Langdon Winner and Ithiel de Sola Pool, Shapiro smartly insists that technologies like the Internet are never indivisible from the politics of the societies in which they grow up. Thus, the precise dimensions of the control revolution will be hammered out in perpetual, and sometimes nasty, debates across all sectors of human society.
In a dynamic familiar to Internet Economy observers, Shapiro describes the freedom and control available to Internet users in several areas: politics (Webcasts from independent Radio B92 in Belgrade), shopping (Amazon.com) and commerce (day trading). He then documents the ways in which powerful interests resist these changes, whether in the form of blatantly unconstitutional laws, censorship or monopoly ownership.
Then in concise chapters, Shapiro discusses what he calls the "oversteer," or the tendency of Internet companies and users to overcompensate for resistance. This section details the darker side that Net romantics prefer to ignore, and it nicely showcases Shapiro's patient, yet insistent, reasoning.
While personalization of Internet material is almost certainly good, using the Net to filter out unwanted messages might well destroy important community and democratic values. Allowing e-commerce to flourish untaxed may benefit certain sectors of the economy, but carving out the Net as an eternal duty-free zone can erode the public good.
The Control Revolution's only shortcoming is one beyond the author's "control": The time between most books' conception and publication is several years, and in that period some of Shapiro's examples and arguments have become overly familiar. But that doesn't make them any less compelling, and even the best-trodden examples benefit from Shapiro's scholarly, but accessible, treatment.
In the end, he offers sensible formulas for public and private Net policy: Protect individual privacy; limit the intellectual-property rights of potential software monopolists; and create intermediary bodies that can straddle issues that neither government nor markets handle well. Shapiro_s book will provide thoughtful challenges and excellent resources for Net experts; it is also ideally suited for the beginner trying to figure the whole thing out.
– James Ledbetter
OTHER NEW TITLES OF INTEREST
The Clickable Corporation: Successful Strategies for Capturing the Internet Advantage
by Jonathan Rosenoer, Douglas Armstrong and J. Russell Gates
(Free Press, $26)
Get advice from Arthur Andersen e-commerce experts at a fraction of the usual rate. -- From The Industry Standard
From the Back Cover
"A reservoir of civic reason in our tumultuous age...Shapiro is a de Tocqueville of the information society." David Shenk, author of
Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut "Finally, a book that can help even a novice like me understand what the Internet revolution is all about. Kudos to Andrew Shapiro!" Laurence A. Tisch, former Chairman and CEO of CBS
"This is an extraordinarily powerful and mature story of the hopeful side of the Internet's revolution. Rich with insight, and surprisingly new conclusions, Shapiro's book is the best 'second-generation' thought on the questions the Net will raise. His account foreshadows the challenges for a liberal democracy in the networked future, and his analysis provides pragmatic and realistic responses for citizens today. Beautifully written, and tightly argued, the book is certain to become a classic." Lawrence Lessig, Berkman Professor, Harvard Law School
"Lucid and provocative from page one, The Control Revolution offers a rare perspective on the high-tech frontier: an enthusiast's understanding of the digital world, tempered by a pragmatist's sense of the limitations of the new media. Shapiro gives us a powerful glimpse of what works in cyberspace--and how to fix what doesn't. The Control Revolution is bound to shape the terms of cyber-debate for years to come." Steven Johnson, editor of Feed Magazine and author of Interface Culture
"While I may be more hyperbolic in my optimism than Shapiro, The Control Revolution is a lean and well-founded argument for a belief we share, namely that electronic networks are returning to individual human beings much of the authority we have lost to institutions during the Industrial Period. The Powers that Be are shortly to become the Powers that Were." John Perry Barlow, Cognitive Dissident, Co-Founder & Vice Chairman, Electronic Frontier Foundation
"Shapiro presents a compelling explanation of why we love the Internet-the control and access it gives us-while also reminding us of the obligations this new power brings us to preserve what is good about America. It's important for each of us to read The Control Revolution, and to take up his call for a balance between personal and public interest." Zoe Baird, President, The Markle Foundation
A thoughtful and balanced treatment of the Internet.... Shapiro celebrates the enhancement of individual freedoms the Internet enables, while pointedly diagnosing its dangers to our collective well-being." Mitchell Kapor, founder Lotus Development Corporation, co-founder Electronic Frontier Foundation
About the Author
Andrew L. Shapiro, a writer and lawyer, is director of the Aspen Institute Internet Policy Project and the First Amendment Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. He has recently been a lecturer at Columbia Law School, a resident fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and a fellow at The Century Foundation. A contributing editor at The Nation, Shapiro has also written for publications including Wired, New York, The New Republic, and The New York Times. This is his second book.
