In a world where everyone is living different versions of the truth, technology platforms have amplified the worst of humanity. Bullies and trolls, perverts and criminals, scammers and spammers – even many of the creators from Silicon Valley are now looking back and wondering what they gave birth to. But are the tech companies the real problem, or are we? While the platforms have made it easier for us to find our tribe and find our ‘truth’, do they make us the worst version of ourselves? If tech designers keep catering to our demands without considering the consequences, will technology eventually bring down civil society? Would better tech regulation even be enough, or is human nature the thing we really need to fix?
Evgeny Morozov is a contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom and To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism.
He has written for The New York Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, and other publications.
Mark Pesce invented the technology for 3D on the Web, has written seven books, was for seven years a judge on the ABC’s The New Inventors, founded postgraduate programs at USC and AFTRS, holds an honorary appointment at Sydney University, is a multiple-award-winning columnist for The Register, pens another column for IEEE Spectrum, and is professional futurist and public speaker. Pesce hosts both the award-winning ‘The Next Billion Seconds’ and ‘This Week in Startups Australia’ podcasts.