Description
Book SynopsisInternet entrepreneur Andrew Keen was among the earliest to write about the dangers that the Internet poses to our culture and society. His 2007 book The Cult of the Amateur was critical in helping advance the conversation around the Internet, which has now morphed from a tool providing efficiencies and opportunities for consumers and business to a force that is profoundly reshaping our societies and our world.
In his new book, How to Fix the Future, Keen focuses on what we can do about this seemingly intractable situation. Looking to the past to learn how we might change our future, he describes how societies tamed the excesses of the Industrial Revolution, which, like its digital counterpart, demolished long-standing models of living, ruined harmonious environments and altered the business world beyond recognition.
Travelling across the globe, from India to Estonia, Germany to Singapore, he investigates the best (and worst) practices in five key areas - regulation, innovation, social responsibility, consumer choice and education - and concludes by examining whether we are seeing the beginning of the end of the America-centric digital world.
Powerful, urgent and deeply engaging, How to Fix the Future vividly depicts what we must do if we are to try to preserve human values in an increasingly digital world and what steps we might take as societies and individuals to make the future something we can again look forward to.
Trade ReviewA truly important book and the most significant work so far in an emerging body of literature in which technology's smartest thinkers are raising alarm bells about the state of the Internet, and laying groundwork for how to fix it. * Fortune *
How to Fix the Future, by longtime tech critic Andrew Keen, avoids simplistic condemnations, offering instead a progressive plan to ease the growing discomfort with emerging technologies that only a few years ago were being celebrated. The book provides compelling examples of ongoing experiments addressing new ways of developing and integrating socially responsible technology into our lives, especially in media, government, and education . . . Keen genuinely believes that, yes, we can fix the future. -- Larry Downes * Washington Post *
With his new book, Keen switches from sarcasm to a kind of pragmatic optimism . . . Like Churchill, he offers mostly blood, sweat and tears; but at least he has a program of what needs to be done . . . It makes sense, as Keen seeks to do, to take the long view of our current dilemmas. -- John Naughton * Observer *
In [Keen's] acerbic, articulate global survey of human-centered solutions, he examines best practice in consumer choice, education, innovation, regulation and social responsibility . . . An invigorating mix of principle and vision. * Nature *
After years of giddiness about the wonders of technology, a new realization is dawning: the future is broken... In this bracing book, Keen offers tools for righting our societies and principles to guide us in the future. * Walter Isaacson *
In this engaging, provocative book, [Keen] outlines five strategies - regulation, competitive innovation, consumer choice, civic responsibility, and education - that, working in collaboration, can help ensure an open, decentralized digital future... Valuable insights on preserving our humanity in a digital world. * Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) *
Keen, has spent his career warning of the dangers of the Internet, takes a more positive turn in this complex yet accessible study. Comparing our current situation to the Industrial Revolution, he stresses the importance of keeping humanity at the center of technology. * Booklist *
Eschewing much of the over-the-top luddism that now fills the
New York Times, the
Guardian, and other mainstream media outlets, Keen proffers practical solutions to a wide range of tech-related woes. * TechCrunch *
