{"id":5025,"date":"2013-03-10T19:33:12","date_gmt":"2013-03-11T01:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5025"},"modified":"2013-03-10T19:33:12","modified_gmt":"2013-03-11T01:33:12","slug":"evgeny-morozov-we-are-abandoning-all-the-checks-and-balances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5025","title":{"rendered":"Evgeny Morozov: &#8216;We are abandoning all the checks and balances&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/technology\/2013\/mar\/09\/evgeny-morozov-technology-solutionism-interview\">Ian Tucker:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Evgeny Morozov is a Belarus-born technology writer who has held positions at Stanford and Georgetown universities in the US. His first book, The Net Delusion, argued that &#8220;Western do-gooders may have missed how [the internet]\u2026 entrenches dictators, threatens dissidents, and makes it harder \u2013 not easier \u2013to promote democracy&#8221;. It was described as &#8220;brilliant and courageous&#8221; by the New York Times. In his second book To Save Everything, Click Here, Morozov critiques what he calls &#8220;solutionism&#8221; \u2013 the idea that given the right code, algorithms and robots, technology can solve all of mankind&#8217;s problems, effectively making life &#8220;frictionless&#8221; and trouble-free. Morozov argues that this drive to eradicate imperfection and make everything &#8220;efficient&#8221; shuts down other avenues of progress and leads ultimately to an algorithm-driven world where Silicon Valley, rather than elected governments, determines the shape of the future.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the technologies you describe as &#8220;solutionist&#8221; many people find useful. For instance self-tracking gadgets that encourage people to exercise, to monitor their blood pressure or warn them about their driving habits and reduce their insurance premiums.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ian Tucker: Evgeny Morozov is a Belarus-born technology writer who has held positions at Stanford and Georgetown universities in the US. His first book, The Net Delusion, argued that &#8220;Western do-gooders may have missed how [the internet]\u2026 entrenches dictators, threatens dissidents, and makes it harder \u2013 not easier \u2013to promote democracy&#8221;. It was described as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5025"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}