Please add this to your must-purchase-but-may-never-read book list: Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society, by Ronald J. Deibert. I understand if you never get around to actually reading it, but at least have it displayed prominently on your bookshelf.
Another option is to listen to the five-part series on CBC Idea’s podcast (I know, I’m asking a lot...)
But I’ll give you a few reasons why you should at least consider. First, he’s Canadian. That counts for something, right? Second, he’s despised by the Russians and other autocratic states. That tells you he’s doing something good, right?
He also knows a lot about our new digital world. What could be more relevant? But as with all books we don’t really want to read, there are some messages we don’t necessarily want to hear. It’s like reading about climate change in the 1980s or covid-19 in December 2019, before we could ever conceive of the global impact. Why should we be interested? My iPhone works fine. Facebook serves me well. I’ve got nothing to hide!
But the effect of our new communications ecosystem is having a significant impact on all of us, where “accountability is weak and exploitation is endemic.”
It’s reached the point where everyone is vulnerable.
Diebert, who founded the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, has been the target of attacks himself because of his mission to dig beneath the surface of government and corporate use of the internet. It's strange, but governments of all stripes don’t appreciate it when a small Canadian research group uncovers their methods of espionage.
But it happens. One wrong click (as the Democratic Party learned in 2015) and the Russians gain access to all your data. It’s become common for foreign governments to hack the phones of their political opponents, even those living abroad. With such easy access to information (your contacts, your messages, your location), human spies have become obsolete.
But it’s not just foreign governments. Edward Snowden revealed how the U.S. government invaded the privacy of its citizens by seamlessly hacking their personal social media accounts. Ironically, he now lives in exile in Russia.
Corporations don’t even need to hack your data. They just take it, because we’re all too willing to give it to them. Facebook and Google, to name a couple, rely on this model. Through “free” services, they get to know you and your likes and how to target you as a consumer; how to even manipulate your consumer choices. It doesn’t sound so bad, does it?
They might even track your location through your phone. Does it bother you then?
You might say that you have nothing to hide, but the truth is, we all have something to hide. Facebook owns billions of life stories that are now the company’s life stories. Something doesn’t sound right about that.
But I digress (I assure you, Deibert’s book is much more to the point). Diebert covers all aspects of new technologies, from their addictive nature to their impact on the environment, which I hadn’t much thought about.
The screens we use portray such a clean, environmentally friendly surface. No longer relying on the physical use of paper, we can instead send and share documents via email. Instead of driving to a meeting, we can now chat over a Zoom call.
Yet this all requires energy. Every Google search creates the equivalent carbon dioxide of driving your car 50 feet. It may not sound like much, but think about how many searches and webpages you view in a day, emails and texts you send and receive, and videos you watch online.
All this digital action, which I naively thought of as benign to the environment, adds up. About 7% of greenhouse gases are now caused by our online activities. So much for saving the world by going online! A video conference is still better than flying across the country to meet, but it’s not negligible.
There are other frightening issues that Diebert touches upon, like the mining of rare earth elements that make your smartphone so smart. But I’ll leave those depressing details for another day (we can only digest so much in a sitting).
To be clear, the book isn’t calling for an all-out war on technology. Deibert isn’t some idealist from left field. In fact, his title is misleading. He's not actually advocating for a complete reset on our technological progress, but rather restraint, as he reveals in his final chapter.
He understands there’s no stopping social media, as he shares his own struggles with the addictive features of his phone. There’s no stopping technological trends, where we pretty much need a phone to operate in today’s world (to be sure, there are still ways to live without one, or so I've been told).
What he wants is a re-evaluation of how tech companies and governments use our data; how technology is being used to impact democracy, the environment and human rights.
That message alone is worthy of your bookshelf.
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