Review

Reviewed Work(s): To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological

Solutionism by Evgeny Morozov
Review by: Benjamin W. Cramer
Source: Journal of Information Policy , 2014, Vol. 4 (2014), pp. 173-175
Published by: Penn State University Press

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 JOURNAL OF INFORMATION POLICY 4 (2014): 173-175.

BOOK REVIEW

EVGENY MOROZOV
TO SAVE EVERYTHING, CLICK HERE: THE FOLLY OF
TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTIONISM
PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 2013
Evgeny Morozov, formerly a fellow at New America Foundation and
currently a senior editor for The New Republic, is building a career as a
contrarian thinker in the realm of technology and society. In 2011 he
gained the notice of the telecommunications policy establishment
with his first book, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom.
In a quite convincing fashion, that book articulated Morozov’s
skepticism toward what he called “cyber-utopianism,” or the
commonly-held belief that the Internet can emancipate oppressed
peoples and foster the spread of democracy because of its enablement
of greater interpersonal communication and organization. With a
powerful dose of political realism, Morozov argued that not only is
this philosophy naïve, but that the Internet, thanks to that very same
openness and accessibility, has made repressive governments stronger
than ever by enabling data tracking and surveillance. While it received
mixed reactions from the policy and programming communities, The Net Delusion was a hard-hitting
contrarian statement that become even more believable with the Edward Snowden revelations in 2013.

Alas, in his new book To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism, Morozov has
replaced insightful skepticism with troubling cynicism. His target for contrarian analysis this time is
what he calls “technological solutionism,” or the belief that the Internet and smart devices can be
depended upon to solve social and personal problems through the sharing and analysis of data. A
common example of this trend is the self-monitoring movement in health care, in which people wear
smart devices that track heartbeats per minute, blood pressure, dietary intake, calories burnt, hours of
sleep, and myriad other pieces of information that are then tracked and analyzed in the Internet cloud
while being shared with doctors and like-minded friends. The belief is that these masses of data, when
properly crunched and shared, will catch health problems in advance and even encourage healthier
habits through the “gamification” effect.

Morozov clearly does not believe the hype. In Chapter One he takes aim at his first target: smart
kitchens – a new consumerist gimmick that apparently exemplifies how technological solutionism is

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VOL. 4 JOURNAL OF INFORMATION POLICY 174 

destroying human endeavor. In the smart kitchen trend, cooking devices ranging from ovens to
measuring cups are becoming digitized and Internet-enabled to track and share data in the cloud and
in real time, just like the health monitoring equipment described above. While cooking, the goal is to
have the cloud inform you immediately if you are not completing a recipe correctly, thus encouraging
you to be a better cook. Morozov is surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly) hostile toward this trend,
using it as an example of how a dependence on having computerized devices tell you how and when
to do everything is reducing creativity and the wonders of invention. Indeed, new dishes arise from
experimentation and even mistakes while following old recipes, and master chefs often ignore recipes
and create delicious new confections through inspiration and ingenuity.

Thus the stage is set for a book-length critique of technological solutionism, with the author’s
disapproval of smart kitchens being extended into matters like e-government, crime prevention,
community organization, and education. Morozov’s previous book The Net Delusion had ominous
implications for human rights and political freedom, as seen in his coverage of Middle Eastern
protests, during which American political operatives encouraged pro-democracy activists to organize
via social networking sites, while ignoring the very real possibility that their oppressive regimes can
use the same technologies to find the leaders of the protests and crack down on them accordingly.
But in To Save Everything, Click Here, Morozov is railing against a much more abstract philosophy – the
belief in the power of data – that may not embody a problem that really needs to be solved, lapsing
into a pattern of cynicism that is not particularly enlightening. Overall, the book feels like a
condemnation of one’s intellectual opponents, with insults phrased as rhetorical questions like “Would
it be too much to expect our geeks to know anything about history?” (pg. 136) and judgments like
“enough claptrap has certainly been written about ‘the Internet’ and its ability to build bridges and
establish connections across nations” (pg. 291).

In fairness, Morozov does try to convince readers of the importance of his thesis in the book’s
introduction: “Imperfection, ambiguity, opacity, disorder, and the opportunity to err, to sin, to do the
wrong thing: all of these are constitutive of human freedom… If we don’t find the strength and the
courage to escape the silicon mentality that fuels much of the quest for human perfection, we risk
finding ourselves with a politics devoid of everything that makes politics desirable” (pg. xiv). While
framing his argument around modern trends in data analysis, Morozov is essentially engaged in the
humanist’s age-old resistance to the scientific quantification of human experience, claiming that “this
quest is likely to have unexpected consequences that could eventually cause more damage than the
problems they seek to address” (pg. 5).

Granted, there is reason to question whether the numbers spit out by inhuman online algorithms
should be used to make decisions on a matter as crucial as the education of children; and it might be
unwise (or at least premature) to tell yourself that you’ve embarked on a healthy new lifestyle because
a beeping gadget on your arm says that you burned a few more calories today than yesterday. Morozov
in fact comes up with some very believable worst-case scenarios with true political ramifications, such
as his analysis of the misuse of totally transparent government-held data about private citizens in
Chapter Three, and an interesting discussion of data-driven discrimination in Chapter Seven.

 
 

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VOL. 4 JOURNAL OF INFORMATION POLICY 175 

But after stating his disagreement with this modern trend in poor human decision-making (and
rightfully so, to a certain extent) Morozov constructs this book as a literature review in which he
merely sets up other authors’ pro-solutionism writings as targets for his own increasingly harsh
critiques. Chapter Two leaps into a 46 page-long review of classics of Internet boosterism by authors
ranging from Lawrence Lessig to Clay Shirky to Tim Wu, plus some historical works that influenced
them. Morozov points out his disagreements with each particular book’s theses with a steadily
increasing sense of cynicism, bottoming out with the insult “America’s most overrated historian”
toward the influential Daniel Boorstin (pg. 57). Along the way, Morozov criticizes the solutionist habit
of coining annoying new terms like “crowdsourcing” but does the same thing himself throughout the
book, such as “epochalism” (pg. 36), “technological defeatism” (pg. 213), and “macroscopism” (pg.
216), not to mention “technological solutionism” around which he builds the entire book.

Morozov’s critiques of solutionist thinkers typically have a kernel of realism but become increasingly
difficult to take seriously due to his condescending writing style. After reprinting a lengthy quote by
Google executive Bill Maris, a fan of data-driven funding for public services, Morozov proclaims,
“This little tirade has everything: the worship of the individual hero; the entrepreneur, the myth of
‘the Internet’ as created without much government intervention… the sharp distinction between
politics and administration and a healthy disgust for the former” (pg. 135). The present reviewer did
not find disgust in Maris’s statement, but did find it in Morozov’s reaction. In Chapter Six, Morozov
spends five pages slamming a pro-technology book by Wired editor Kevin Kelly, and in Chapter Eight
he fills up nine pages with his displeasure toward Microsoft’s self-monitoring trailblazer Gordon Bell.
The tail end of the book becomes disarmingly spotty, exemplified by an attempted deconstruction of
“gamification” (pg. 296-301), topped off with a personal insult toward games researcher Jane
McGonigal: “She seems so utterly confused about human experience – this probably comes with a
Palo Alto zip code” (pg. 308). On the following page Morozov states that McGonigal gives “the
impression that she has never worked a day in her life” (pg. 309).

The unsatisfying nature of To Save Everything, Click Here is inadvertently brought to light in Chapter
Four, during Morozov’s coverage of various web services that claim to be revolutionizing the
American democratic process by analyzing users’ political opinions and activities to connect them to
each other, so apparently they will be better able to organize and accomplish their goals. After a
critique populated with rhetorical questions like “But what does ‘iTunes of Politics’ even mean?” (pg.
113), Morozov takes another opportunity to enforce his displeasure with “Here, once again, ‘the
Internet’ is a great solution to a problem that does not exist” (pg. 114). The same could possibly be
said about this book. And even if technological solutionism were really the threat to human endeavor
that Morozov claims it to be, he defeats his arguments with a condescending attitude. As an author of
books for the thinking observer of technology and society, Morozov got off to an impressive start
with his debut in 2011. Now he needs to recover.

Reviewed by Benjamin W. Cramer

Institute for Information Policy, The Pennsylvania State University

 
 

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