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Beyond the Valley
Book

Beyond the Valley

How Innovators Around the World are Overcoming Inequality and Creating the Technologies of Tomorrow (MIT Press)

Ramesh Srinivasan and Douglas Rushkoff
MIT Press, 2020

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Comprehensive
  • Eye Opening
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Google instantly answers even the most inane questions; Amazon delivers almost every product under the sun; Facebook connects people to friends halfway across the world. These companies are so ubiquitous you hardly question them – until a major data breach occurs, a robot takes your job or a foreign power interferes in your presidential election. The stars of the tech industry are monopolies with little accountability, and they often have deleterious effects on society. Thankfully, as Information Studies professor Ramesh Srinivasan explains in Beyond the Valley, better alternatives exist.

Take-Aways

  • In its early days, the internet promised to be a democratizing, equalizing force. 
  • Despite this early promise, the internet has not made society more democratic; if anything, it has become more authoritarian and unequal. 
  • The internet’s problems largely stem from the rise of monopolistic companies with opaque practices. 

About the Authors

Ramesh Srinivasan is a UCLA professor and the founder of the Digital Cultures Lab. 

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