Geek Heresy (38 page)

45
.
  
Paul Revere Heritage Project (n.d.). In highlighting the lanterns, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose “Midnight Ride” is the basis for this American legend, was applying poetic license. After all, there’s romance in ingenuity; the symbolism of lamplight breaks up the monotony of what would otherwise have just been one long ride on a horse. But while creative license leads to catchy ideas that serve poetry, it’s not a good basis for accurate analysis or sound policy.

46
.
  
60 Minutes
(2011).

47
.
  
Morozov (2011).

48
.
  
Clay Shirky makes these exuberant comments in an interview with TED owner and curator Chris Anderson (2009).

49
.
  
Gladwell (2011).

50
.
  
Taylor (2011).

51
.
  
Yaqoob and Collins (2011).

52
.
  
Tichenor et al. (1970).

53
.
  
Mumford (1966), p. 9.

54
.
  
Agre (2002). Agre appears to be the first person to have outlined a theory of amplification for technology and society. I agree with almost everything he has written on the topic, so we differ only on emphasis: First, Agre claims that the holistic effect of the Internet on politics is impossible to predict, because the underlying forces are so complex; I agree but believe that prediction is possible in more limited cases where human forces are easier to understand. Second, Agre confines himself to a discussion of the Internet in politics and governance; I believe amplification applies to all of society’s interactions with a broad range of technologies, not just the Internet, and not even just digital.

Chapter 3: Geek Myths Debunked

Dispelling Misguided Beliefs About Technology

1
.
  
Harvey (1988), for example, discusses the advertising strategy for marketing the Walkman to children. In it, he notes, “My First Sony [Walkman] has created a new merchandise category for toy stores,” and, “The company [Sony] has a long history of pushing through products it believes in” over the doubts of distributors. Remarks like these are readily taken up as proof of a technology firm’s ability to arbitrarily alter consumer behavior, as noted in Sanderson and Uzumeri (1995): “It is not uncommon to view innovative success as the natural result of managerial leadership and effective marketing.”

2
.
  
For a thorough treatment of the cultural studies angle to the Walkman, see Du Gay (1997). The reproduced readings at the end of Du Gay’s book show the range of approaches to the Walkman, most of which, incidentally, are not inconsistent with the Law of Amplification.

3
.
  
In fact, there are niche firms that sell hairshirts and such (search online for “cilice”) – illustrating the rich variety of human culture – but they are hardly mainstream.

4
.
  
Turkle (2011).

5
.
  
See, for example, Baym (2010), pp. 51–57.

6
.
  
Rosenfeld and Thomas (2012).

7
.
  
Wortham (2011); Leland (2011). Przybylski et al. (2013) reveal that those with lower life satisfaction and satisfaction of social needs tend to display more FOMO-related behaviors on social media.

8
.
  
Goldman (2009).

9
.
  
GOP Doctors Caucus (n.d.).

10
.
  
Reinhardt (2012).

11
.
  
White (2007); Rumpf et al. (2011).

12
.
  
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2013a). For an insightful analysis of American health care, including comparisons with other countries’ systems, see Cohn (2008).

13
.
  
See, for example, Spiceworks (2014).

14
.
  
Brill (2013).

15
.
  
Hampton et al. (2011).

16
.
  
See, for example, Crescenzi et al. (2013), Lee et al. (2010), and Olson and Olson (2000). The last provides an excellent summary and analysis for why distance doesn’t collapse even with digital technologies.

17
.
  
Cairncross (1997), p. xvi. Presumably in a response to critics, Cairncross (2001) softens her points in a revised edition. The corresponding sentence becomes: “People will communicate more freely with human beings on other parts of the globe. As a result, while wars will still be fought, the effect
may
be to foster world peace” (emphasis mine, recall tactics by Schmidt and Cohen 2013). But her general thrust remains much the same – in fact, she adds a few more ways in which technology will definitely improve the world, such as in the developing world.

18
.
  
Van Alstyne and Brynjolfsson (2005).

19
.
  
Selective exposure goes back to work by seminal psychologist Leon Festinger (1957), who posited the idea of cognitive dissonance – the discomfort people feel when presented with contradictory information. Selective exposure occurs when, in a bid to avoid cognitive dissonance, people tend to seek only information that confirms their beliefs.

20
.
  
Van Alstyne and Brynjolfsson (2005).

21
.
  
Stecklow (2005).

22
.
  
Mukul (2006); Raina and Timmons (2011).

23
.
  
A phablet is bigger than a smartphone, but smaller than a tablet.

24
.
  
That the digital divide is a symptom of other socioeconomic divides was astutely noted about telecenters by
Economist
(2005). The same article, however, curiously went on to suggest that mobile phones would somehow “promote bottom-up development” that presumably would help close socioeconomic divides because of their greater penetration. Its claim, in other words, is that the telecenter-based digital divide is a symptom of socioeconomic divides, but the mobile-phone-based digital divide is not.

25
.
  
This paragraph argues that the absolute difference in outcomes between high- and low-capacity people increases with an even spread of technology. The
relative
difference may not change. But! If you fold in the fact that richer people access superior technologies, then the increase in inequality is superlinear: As new technologies appear, the rich get richer out of proportion to their initial relative wealth. I don’t mean to say that low-cost technologies can’t help poorer people – they certainly can. And for some people, like the political philosopher John Rawls, this would be good enough, at least in theory. In practice, though, this argument neglects the fact that political power and finite natural resources are both zero sum – the more that someone has, the less others do, so increasing absolute inequality is
necessarily
worse for those at the bottom. In any case, for anyone who sees inequality itself as the problem, low-cost technology is in no way the solution.

26
.
  
Much of the text that follows about Gary King’s studies previously appeared in Toyama (2013b).

27
.
  
King et al. (2013a).

28
.
  
King et al. (2013b).

29
.
  
King et al. (2013a) cite an example of apolitical collective action: In 2011, following Japan’s nuclear plant disaster, there was a rumor that iodized salt protected against radiation. Online posts that might incite hordes of shoppers to buy salt were suppressed.

30
.
  
The quotation is from King et. al. (2013a), summarizing Dimitrov (2008).

31
.
  
Guilford (2013).

32
.
  
Brewis et al. (2011) suggest that there is a global trend toward stigmatizing obesity, but it overviews a range of work showing that different cultures have different weight preferences. Sobal and Stunkard (1989) review literature linking socioeconomic class to weight.

33
.
  
Lenhart (2012); Hafner (2009). In 2011, when I gave a talk at the Maricopa Community Colleges, I asked how many people sent more than one hundred texts a day. Almost every student raised a hand while the faculty looked around in disbelief.

34
.
  
Though, with amplification in mind, this still seems like a predictable case of amplified teenage socializing.

35
.
  
Thanks to skeptics, it’s clear that just about every technology has outcomes not wholly intended by its creators or its users. To put a new technology out there
is
to cause outcomes no one entity can wholly predict. Thus, routine failures to anticipate them, monitor them, and manage them are again a kind of passive intention.

36
.
  
Sartre (1957 [1983]), p. 15: “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”

Chapter 4: Shrink-Wrapped Quick Fixes

Technology as an Exemplar of the Packaged Intervention

1
.
  
My use of the term “packaged interventions” is very similar to what Evgeny Morozov (2013) calls “technological solutions” and what William Easterly (2014) calls “technical” or “technocratic solutions.” I didn’t want to use the word “solution,” though, since packaged interventions are
not
necessarily solutions. And I avoid “technology” and “technocracy” because I already use them elsewhere to mean specific things.

2
.
  
Yunus (1999), p. 48.

3
.
  
From Yunus’s foreword in Counts (2008), p. viii.

4
.
  
Counts (2008), p. 4.

5
.
  
Based on data available at MixMarket (2014).

6
.
  
Bloomberg Businessweek
(2007).

7
.
  
In 2010, a microlending organization called SKS Microfinance repeated Compartamos’s feat in India, raising $358 million in its IPO, and setting off a national debate that crippled the microcredit industry in that country. Many accused SKS and other microfinance institutions of pushing loans too aggressively. Vijay Mahajan, an elder statesman of microfinance in India, said that some of the newer organizations “kept piling on more loans in the same geographies. . . . That led to more indebtedness, and in some cases it led to suicides” (Polgreen and Bajaj 2010). Angry politicians in the state of Andhra Pradesh passed strict laws on how microloans can be issued and instigated a grassroots backlash. Borrowers stopped repayments altogether. See also Bajaj (2011). An attempt at a levelheaded assessment of these situations is offered in Rosenberg (2007).

8
.
  
Yunus (2011).

9
.
  
Collins et al. (2009).

10
.
  
David Roodman (2012) at the Center for Global Development performs an excellent deconstruction of microfinance, incorporating and analyzing recent studies without oversimplification. Many of the studies cited in this chapter are given more detailed treatment in his book, which also explains what is firmly established about microfinance and what remains unknown.

11
.
  
Karlan and Zinman (2010).

12
.
  
Karlan and Zinman (2011).

13
.
  
Angelucci et al. (2013).

14
.
  
Banerjee et al. (2010). In 2005, economists Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster, and Cynthia Kinnan persuaded a microlending organization called Spandana to open branches in 52 locations, randomly selected from a larger pool of 104 poor, urban neighborhoods in Hyderabad. Fifteen to 18 months after the branch openings, the neighborhoods where microcredit was available didn’t appear on the whole to be wealthier than those without. Nor were there detectable
changes in overall household spending, women’s say in spending decisions, health-related measures, or educational outcomes. The most they could say was that Spandana’s presence caused a 2 percent increase in the number of households that opened new businesses, a 55-cent increase in spending on durable goods per person per month, and a 23-cent decrease in perishable consumer goods – durable goods being more likely to support businesses. Their conclusion? “Microcredit therefore may not be the miracle that is sometimes claimed on its behalf, but it does allow households to borrow, invest, and create and expand businesses.”

15
.
  
Ray and Ghahremani (2014).

16
.
  
Vornovytsky et al. (2011).

17
.
  
See, for example, Krugman (2010).

18
.
  
Banerjee et al. (2010); Drexler et al. (2010); Karlan and Zinman (2011).