Should technology save the world?

Imagine a "connected" car that when the check engine light comes on, it diagnoses the problem, contacts the appropriate repair place and makes the first available appointment for you, all without you having to do anything. Effortless, frictionless and some would argue, antithetical to the human need to have more control over our environment.

There is no question that the geeks and entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley want to change the world. That they want digital solutions to all the worlds problems. The problem might be argued, is that they also want to define those problems and in that way, may be trying to transform human nature in ways that may not be in its long term best interests.

These are some of the ideas of technology contrarian Evgeny Morozov. He lays all of this out in his new work, To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism.

My conversation with Evgeny Morozov:

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The Dark Side of Internet Freedom

When the Green Revolution took place in Iran last year, many of us saw every tweet of the revolutionaries. But, while it may have moved us, what impact did it actually have on the ground? To what extent has social networking aided the recent democratic revolutions in Tunisia and what is it’s impact today in Egypt? As the Internet spreads though China, Russia and even Lebanon, what impact is it having? Is it empowering democratic forces or is it providing a kind of organizing force for dictators and the forces of repression? Is the Internet a catalyst for social change for these fledgling forces of freedom, or a kind of glue actually holding authoritarian regimes together? For too long we’ve allowed conventional wisdom to dictate the discussion here. But the facts just may be somewhat different. Journalist and Evgeny Morozov takes us to place that exposes the dark side of the Internet freedom in his new work The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom.

My conversation with Evgeny Morozov:

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