Morozov's "To Save Everything, Click Here"

I admit it - Evegny Morozov's thought is, in many respects, what this blog is all about.  Reading him is like reading Christopher Hitchens - a sly joy, with many "gotcha" moments of truth, and generally an intellectual good time. In "The Net Delusion", he utterly destroyed the notion that "the Internet" and social media were inherently democracy-inducing.  Techno-utopians forgot the basic reality that the Internet can be controlled (hello China!), can be used to spy on citizens (hello US!) and that its architecture, not its inherent nature, will determine whether it is used for democracy or authoritarianism. In his latest book, he takes on "technological solutionism", the notion that (a) every glitch represents a problem to be solved, and (b)  worse still, that technology has a solution for it. On its face, the book is a clarion call for recognition of the human dimension of technological limitation - that human functioning (like messy democracy itself) is not necessarily a problem (but perhaps its own solution), and that tech fixes aren't necessarily solutions. Whether it's algorithms telling us "what we want to hear" without knowing who we really are, or the conceit of being technologically able to remember and document everything (no I do not want to recall every moment of my life and I prefer Proust's selective memory), the book is a refreshing reminder not of technology's technological limits but of the limits of its human application. At times Morozov is less than convincing (as in his defense of gridlocked politics), and the book lingers far too long (for my tastes) on dense social theories.  Overall, though, while being slightly off in places, it is a fascinating, refreshing, well-done piece of techno-social thought.

Boston Marathon Suspect Capture and Technology

First and foremost, kudos to all law enforcement officials involved in capturing the Boston Marathon suspect - local police forces, FBI, DEA, HS, ATF  - all of them. They captured the subject, alive and with no additional collateral damage. Their work was flawless. Technology certainly played its part - thermal imaging in the helicopter above, and most importantly, communications technology which has been honed post-9/11. The ability of teams to communicate in voices barely above a whisper, across platforms and with all other agencies involved, was critical to the success of the mission. The technology, though, did not take the place of human police work, or of human observation. Crowdsourced police work? To a limited degree - certainly the decision to post photos of the suspects led to helpful tips. But in the end, it was Mr. 67 Franklin Street who went outside, saw blood on his boat, went back inside and called police, that brought this mini-drama to an end. Human observation before heat-seeking infrared.

The SEC Finally "Gets" Twitter - Almost

Last week the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a rare Report of Investigation announcing the closure of its asinine enforcement action against Netflix and its CEO Reed Hastings. The investigation stemmed from Hastings having tweeted  in July 2012 the following: "Congrats to Ted Sarados and his amazing content license team. Netflix monthly viewing exceeded 1 billion hours for the first time ever in June...Keep going Ted, we need even more!". The SEC's complaint was that this tweet violated Regulation FD which is (rightfully) intended to prevent public companies from making disclosure of material, non-public information to select shareholders only. Regulation FD provides that material non-public information must be disseminated either by a filing with the SEC itself or in a manner "reasonably designed to provide broad, non-exclusionary distribution of the information to the public".  The legal issue then was whether disclosing information via Twitter was "reasonably designed to provide broad, non-exclusionary distribution of the information to the public". The SEC fudged - it said that companies could use Twitter feeds to disclose information but only if they had told their shareholders in advance they might do so. Hello? This reminds me of an exchange between Moe and Curly of the Three Stooges - Moe: "How dumb can you get?" Curly: "How dumb do you want me to get?" Reality check: Twitter has 500 million users, 340 million tweets per day and 1.6 billion search queries per day. Market professionals (and amateurs with even limited digital skills) always follow their companies (and company CEOs) on Twitter.  The SEC is still living in the days of press releases and purely curated content by large news organizations. Rather than taking the correct step of simply saying - "yes, Twitter is an appropriate platform for disclosure", it goes through the charade of making companies add a bit of boilerplate disclosure to the "Further Information" sections of their SEC filings saying "please follow our Twitter feeds for more info". That language adds nothing, and ignores the information-feed reality of the past few years.  Epic fail.