Techlash

July 1, 2023
A detailed, well-researched rundown of the runaway tech sector. Wheeler is a former chairman of the Federal Communication Corporation and a successful venture capitalist, so when it comes to regulation of the tech giants that dominate the U.S. economy, he is a person whose voice should be heard. In this follow-up to From Gutenberg to Google, the author argues that the past few decades are similar to the Gilded Age following the Civil War, when powerful barons built enormous wealth by harnessing new technologies. They used their power to bury potential competitors and intimidate politicians, but they met their match in Theodore Roosevelt, who broke up the monopolies and established a regulatory system. Wheeler sees enough similarities to draw useful lessons for ways to leash the tech beasts, and he presents a host of proposals. A crucial move would be to ensure that competition can flourish through a rewriting of the outmoded regulations and laws to shift the emphasis from technical rules to behavioral standards. The liability rules for social media companies must be revised with the public interest, not corporations, in mind. Wheeler believes that there is currently a window of opportunity created by a high level of community distrust of big tech. This might be true, but it is by no means clear that the distrust translates into an organized impetus for increased regulation, which would mean a period of disruption. Moreover, the tech behemoths have invested billions in political protection. At the moment, there are no Rooseveltian figures on either side of the political spectrum. Wheeler's ideas are important, and policymakers should read this book carefully. Finding the courage to act on it, however, does not seem likely. With a firm sense of history and an eye on the future, Wheeler lays out a rock-solid plan for controlling the tech giants.

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August 1, 2023

Businessman and former FCC chair Wheeler (From Gutenberg to Google) argues for regulating technically innovative companies such as Meta, Amazon, and others. The book describes these types of companies as ones that gather users' personal information, which virtually invades consumer privacy; they make money by selling targeted ads on their platforms, and they sometimes monopolize the competitive market. The author says these tactics undermine democracy and that they corrode the shared knowledge that's essential for a democracy to function. VERDICT This book proposes complicated but feasible solutions to prevent the weakening of personal privacy and the undermining of competition. A good book for those interested in public policy about technology companies and their innovations and approaches.--Shmuel Ben-Gad

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 18, 2023
Lax regulation has allowed the most powerful tech companies to become “pseudo-governments” imposing their will on the public, according to this impassioned broadside. Wheeler (From Gutenberg to Google), former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission during the Obama administration, draws parallels between the Gilded Age and the present, noting that the income inequality and market concentration that characterize both eras were ameliorated in the 19th century by “antitrust law and regulatory oversight.” Advocating for the use of similar tools to curtail the power of Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook), and Microsoft, Wheeler warns that these companies have been implementing invasive data collecting and other problematic practices with few means for users to push back. Wheeler persuasively makes the case that tech CEOs can’t be trusted to regulate themselves, and while his policy recommendations are somewhat unspecific, they include putting into law the privacy principles outlined by Ann Cavoukian, the former privacy commissioner of Ontario, who encouraged establishing “privacy as the default setting,” and requiring “interoperability” (the ability to interface across independent platforms) to enhance competition (as a hypothetical example, Wheeler proposes a “social media platform for privacy-conscious users that would still be able to communicate with their friends on a different platform”). It’s a potent primer on the need to rein in big tech.