Trapped in the Net

Rating:
Summary: Curiously surprising.
Review: Although the title causes one to think of certain films involving certain speedy actresses, the subtitle, "The Unanticipated Consequences of Computerization," sets a tone more like that of the book itself.

Working from the perspectives of both the natural and social sciences, Rochlin proposes the interesting idea that our great reliance upon computers and computerized artifacts has significant consequences outside of equipment failure or the deskilling of labor.

Although the organization of the book is somewhat poor, I consider the text a must for anyone interested in the overall relationship between technology and human life

Rating:
Summary: Top Notch Work
Review: Despite a title and a cover designed to grab the demographic who reads Wired magazine, this book is one of the sanest, most well-reasoned and well-researched books on the sociology of computing that I have ever read. To my mind, the book easily places Rochlin among the ranks of Langdon Winner and Jacques Ellul. While 'gurus' like Esther Dyson and Sherry Turkle continue to churn out fluff books about the way computing is 'revolutionizing' our lives, Rochlin returns to a quaint little practice some people used to call 'research'. As a computer systems engineer, I have been in the industry long enough to see the casual contempt that most technologists have for the user communities they serve, and I appreciate Rochlin's nuanced efforts to give historical context to these attitudes. Ours is an industry full of pampered whiners who inherited an intolerance for accountability and self-scrutiny from the think-tank darlings of the 50s and 60s, as Rochlin shows. This critique will not be a welcome one for many, and Rochlin will be accused of Luddism. But such a claim laid against a man who was a physicist for a decade is ridiculous. Rochlin not only exposes the irresponsibility of attitudes in the developer community, but also provides a welcome tonic to the hyperbole and snake-oil claims made about digital productivity gains and intelligent machines. If you are a responsible technologist and not simply another zealot who prays to the false totems of AI and the 'digital revolution', you will breathe a sigh of relief that finally SOMEONE wrote this book.

Rating:
Summary: A grouch book with no solutions
Review: This book belongs in the genre of what I call Grouch Books: extensive laments about costs and consequences of technology, but with no attempts at syntheses or solutions. At every turn, the author paints a "no exit" vision of the internet: if it's freewheeling and unregulated, it's "chaotic" and "disorganized"; where it's centralized, it is overbearing and freedom-robbing. The author makes it seem as though the people concerned with hardware and software development are thoughtless, greedy, naive, or some combination. Any hint of libertarian ideals in the shakers and movers of digital culture is dismissed by Rochlin as naive and illusory, and every tendency of this culture is, in his vision, toward loss of humanity and the replacement of art with artifice. This book is single-track thinking at its worst. And to anyone who has experienced the benefits of digital culture and design, the complaining tone grows tiresome and monotonous. On those very rare occasions when he begrudges some possible benefits of the internet, Rochelin immediately qualifies them out of existence. The increased information made available by the internet, for example, is seen as all right for those who use it for "social development," but not for "conversation and entertainment" -- as if mere conversation had nothing to do with social development. If readers want to read about the costs and consequences of technology, they would be far better advised to go through a book such as Neil Postman's *Technopoly.* While just as grim in his assessment of the current state of affairs, Postman has a much greater range, and at least has the intellectual stamina to propose a solution.