Beyond the valley : how innovators around the world are overcoming inequality and creating the technologies of tomorrow / Ramesh Srinivasan.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgments (p. vii)
• Foreword (p. ix)
• Introduction (p. 1)
• I Intrusive Tactics: Tracked, Hijacked, and Hooked (p. 7)
• 1 The Power of Data (p. 9)
• 2 The Social Contract (p. 21)
• 3 Foreclosing the Future (p. 27)
• 4 Disconnection and Connection (p. 39)
• 5 Blind Solutions (p. 51)
• II Political Data Games: Targeted, Manipulated, and Motivated (p. 59)
• 6 Brave New Digital World (p. 61)
• 7 Cambridge Analytica and Global Disinformation (p. 69)
• 8 The Great Radicalizes (p. 85)
• 9 Bernie Is Born (p. 95)
• 10 Digital War Games around the World (p. 105)
• III Gig Economy Blues: Corporate Windfalls or Living Wages? (p. 111)
• 11 Disrupting Jobs and Lives (p. 113)
• 12 Protecting Work and Workers (p. 125)
• 13 Working Hard, Struggling Harder (p. 141)
• 14 Money for Everybody? Exploring Universal Basic Income (p. 147)
• 15 Worker-Owned Technologies (p. 155)
• 16 Discrimination Technologies (p. 159)
• IV An Internet for Us All: Overcoming Inequality (p. 169)
• 17 Keeping Network Power Local (p. 171)
• 18 Questioning Connectivity (p. 181)
• 19 African-Born Technology (p. 191)
• 20 Al in Uganda (p. 205)
• 21 Innovating from the Ground Up in Kenya (p. 213)
• 22 Mobile Power to the People: Indigenous Networks in Mexico (p. 235)
• V Looking Toward Tomorrow: Our Path Is Not Locked In (p. 257)
• 23 Blockchain: A Crazy Free-for-All, and Maybe More? with Adam Reese (p. 259)
• 24 Technology for All (p. 283)
• 25 Educating and Protecting Our Future (p. 297)
• Conclusion (p. 313)
• Notes (p. 317)
• Index (p. 391)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Srinivasan (Univ. of California Los Angeles) advocates for a future where connectivity does not bring with it the opportunity costs of surveillance, income disparity, and false information. He provides examples of how technologies can balance efficiency with equity to promote democracy and diversity, pointing the way to a humane and balanced internet. Big tech's collection of tracked data for purposes of monetization, with earnings going into the pockets of the 1 percent, is another of Srinivasan's concerns; he seeks to identify what is dangerous about the current arrangement and provide a vision for positive change. Srinivasan reviews our blind embrace of technology, providing such examples as the Boeing AI-powered safety features that were not subject to manual override, resulting in fatal plane crashes in 2018 and 2019. He also characterizes the tidal wave of digital information associated with Google searching, pointing out how easy it is to blindly trust such information rather than critically reflect on what we see. Problematizing the "open universe of information," Srinivasan argues that our view is "clouded by algorithmic goggles that filter the near-infinite possibilities ...[while delivering] results that masquerade as truth or knowledge" (p. 301). According to this argument, digital literacy should be a doorway to other important literacies, including political and economic literacy. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. General readers. --Charles Wankel, St. John's University, New York