Students of communication law will find much to ponder—and argue—in these pages.
A British attorney makes a thoughtful case for regulated digital media.
The central problem of the modern internet, writes Susskind, is its “unaccountable power.” Whereas in the earliest days of cyberspace, power was largely wielded by libertarian-inclined technologists who knew how to code, today it’s in the hands of corporations and wealthy individuals who resist being regulated and tend to a kind of “market individualism.” As the author writes, “unlike in medicine, there are no mandatory ethical qualifications for working as a software engineer or technology executive. There is no enforceable industry code of conduct. There is no obligatory certification. There is no duty to put the public ahead of profit. There are few consequences for serious moral failings; no real fear of being suspended or struck off.” Susskind suggests the development of a code, even a body of law, that protects individuals from depredation and manipulation while at the same time calling for “as little state intrusion as possible.” The author takes a cautious, reasoned approach to the attendant problems, noting, for example, that “the simplest form of platform power is the ability to say no.” While he reckons that Trump had it coming when he was banned from Twitter, the hammer could also come down on anyone who displeases an administrator or owner—say, Elon Musk. The question of free expression and what constitutes transgressions against community standards looms large, beginning with “clearer policies, digestible summaries, standardised language,” and the like, including standards specifying that media platforms employ one moderator for every 5,000 users instead of relying on dubious algorithms that too often mistakenly censor comments. Susskind’s analysis of inadequate government is well presented, though those who currently control the internet are unlikely to yield power unless compelled to do so. The author closes with the hope that social media platforms will recognize that regulation will lead to greater public trust in them.
Students of communication law will find much to ponder—and argue—in these pages.Pub Date: July 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-901-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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