Sign-In
Cart
System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot
Paperback
Business GeneralTechnology & EngineeringGeneral Sociology
ISBN13: 9780063251311
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Published: Sep 6 2022
Pages: 352
Weight: 0.60
Height: 0.90 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.60
Language: English
Read this if you want to understand how to shape our technological future and reinvigorate democracy along the way.--Reed Hastings, cofounder and CEO of Netflix
A triumph: an analysis of the critical challenges facing our digital society that is as accessible as it is sophisticated. -- Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of New America
A forward-thinking manifesto from three Stanford professors--experts who have worked at ground zero of the tech revolution for decades--that reveals how big tech's obsession with optimization and efficiency has sacrificed fundamental human values and outlines steps we can take to change course, renew our democracy, and save ourselves.
In no more than the blink of an eye, a naïve optimism about technology's liberating potential has given way to a dystopian obsession with biased algorithms, surveillance capitalism, and job-displacing robots. Yet too few of us see any alternative to accepting the onward march of technology. We have simply accepted a technological future designed for us by technologists, the venture capitalists who fund them, and the politicians who give them free rein.
It doesn't need to be this way.
System Error exposes the root of our current predicament: how big tech's relentless focus on optimization is driving a future that reinforces discrimination, erodes privacy, displaces workers, and pollutes the information we get. This optimization mindset substitutes what companies care about for the values that we as a democratic society might choose to prioritize. Well-intentioned optimizers fail to measure all that is meaningful and, when their creative disruptions achieve great scale, they impose their values upon the rest of us.
Armed with an understanding of how technologists think and exercise their power, three Stanford professors--a philosopher working at the intersection of tech and ethics, a political scientist who served under Obama, and the director of the undergraduate Computer Science program at Stanford (also an early Google engineer)--reveal how we can hold that power to account.
Troubled by the values that permeate the university's student body and its culture, they worked together to chart a new path forward, creating a popular course to transform how tomorrow's technologists approach their profession. Now, as the dominance of big tech becomes an explosive societal conundrum, they share their provocative insights and concrete solutions to help everyone understand what is happening, what is at stake, and what we can do to control technology instead of letting it control us.
Also in
General Sociology
I Can't Believe I Did That: The Game That Gives You Points for Sharing Awkward, Awesome, and Unforgettable Memories: Card Games
Nadelberg, David
Katcher, Neil
Other
Designed for Hi-Fi Living: The Vinyl LP in Midcentury America
Borgerson, Janet
Schroeder, Jonathan
Paperback
Guerrilleros and Neighbours in Arms: Identities & Cultures of Anti-Fascist Resistance in Spain
Marco
Paperback
Urban Revolutions: Urbanisation and (Neo-)Colonialism in Transatlantic Context
Kipfer, Stefan
Paperback
The Destiny of Modern Societies: The Calvinist Predestination of a New Society
Zafirovski, Milan
Paperback
The Agrarian Seeds of Empire: The Political Economy of Agriculture in Us State Building
Bauerly, Brad
Paperback
The Sociogony: Social Facts and the Ontology of Objects, Things, and Monsters
Worrell, Mark P.
Paperback
Revolution and Its Alternatives: Other Marxisms, Other Empowerments, Other Priorities
Brass, Tom
Paperback
How to Be Less Stupid about Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide
Fleming, Crystal M.
Hardcover
The Day It Finally Happens: Alien Contact, Dinosaur Parks, Immortal Humans--And Other Possible Phenomena
Pearl, Mike
Paperback
Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets
Kretzmann, John P.
Paperback
Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World
McNeill, J. R.
Paperback
Too Many People?: Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis
Angus, Ian
Butler, Simon
Paperback
Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry
May, Lary
Paperback
The Clash of Globalizations: Neo-Liberalism, the Third Way and Anti-Globalization
Kiely, Ray
Paperback
Aging Out: An Exploration of Caregiving, Community, and How Americans Grow Old
Schiller, Lucy
Hardcover
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All
Yudkowsky, Eliezer
Soares, Nate
Hardcover
AI for Good: How Real People Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Things That Matter
Tyrangiel, Josh
Hardcover
There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
Goldstone, Brian
Paperback
The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything
Jezer-Morton, Kathryn
Hardcover
Shadow Before the Flame: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Prelude to War
Katz, Catherine Grace
Hardcover
Pay Attention: How the Algorithms and Media Wars Are Suppressing Truth and Rewiring Your Brain
Pakman, David
Hardcover
American Alt: A True Story of Madness and Friendship in a Fractured Country
Lockhart, Chris
Hardcover
Doing Small Things with Great Love: How Everyday Humanitarians Are Changing the World
Eubank, Sharon
Hardcover
The Goddess That Failed: Feminism's Unending War against Men, Families, and Civilization Itself
Fiamengo, Janice
Paperback
Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online
Latifi, Fortesa
Hardcover
The Culting of America: What Makes a Cult and Why We Love Them
Mestyanek Young, Daniella
Reed, Amy
Hardcover
Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home
Grant, Stephen Starring
Paperback
There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
Goldstone, Brian
Hardcover
Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong--and What You Really Need to Know
Oster, Emily
Paperback
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement
Davis, Angela Y.
Paperback
Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering
Gladwell, Malcolm
Paperback
The Tribe and I Have Spoken: The Definitive (Unofficial) Lore and Legacy from the Game's Smartest Surviving Loser
Cesternino, Rob
Kavutskiy, Alex
Hardcover
Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care
Hayes, Kelly
Kaba, Mariame
Paperback
Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile
Naparstek, Aaron
Goodyear, Sarah
Gordon, Doug
Hardcover
The Power Broker (Pulitzer Prize Winner): Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
Caro, Robert A.
Paperback
Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves
Gilbert, Sophie
Paperback
Scream with Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism (1968-1980)
Johnson, Eleanor
Hardcover
Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI
Veliz, Carissa
Hardcover
The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society
Marriott, James
Hardcover
An American Girl: How a Billion-Dollar Doll and Its Unlikely Founder Changed Girlhood Forever
Fitzsimons, Amanda
Hardcover
Who We Are Becoming Matters: The Courage, Wisdom, and Aloha We Need in a Timeplace of Collapse
Wong, Norma Kaweloku
Paperback
Te vas a morir y todavía no has empezado a vivir: 29 principios para vivir mejor (y con más sentido)
Moreno Montana, Uli
Falces, Laura
Paperback
From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdoğan
Hansen, Suzy
Hardcover
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster
Higginbotham, Adam
Paperback
Our Minds Were Always Free: A History of How Black Brilliance Was Exploited--And the Fight to Retake Control
Davis, Lisa E.
Hardcover
Why We Ask Why: The Science of Explanation and the Human Drive to Understand
Lombrozo, Tania
Hardcover
One Bad Mother: In Praise of Psycho Housewives, Stage Parents, Momfluencers, and Other Women We Love to Hate
Dickson, Ej
Hardcover
Street Smarts: Trust Your Instincts, Outsmart Danger, and Stay Safe in a World That Isn't
Eve, Dannah
Hardcover
How to Break Up with Your Phone, Revised Edition: The 30-Day Digital Detox Plan
Price, Catherine
Paperback
The Unsettling of America (50th Anniversary Edition): Culture and Agriculture
Berry, Wendell
Paperback
In Sickness and in Health: Love Stories from the Front Lines of America's Caregiving Crisis
Mauldin, Laura
Hardcover
The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us about America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny
Strauss, William
Howe, Neil
Paperback
One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime That Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, Vol.1
Webb, Whitney Alyse
Paperback
Las Como Hablar para que Los Ninos Escuchen: y Como Escuchar para que los Ninos Hablen
Faber, Adele
Mazlish, Elaine
Paperback
Killers of Roe: My Investigation Into the Mysterious Death of Abortion Rights
Littlefield, Amy
Hardcover
Torched: How a City Was Left to Burn, and the Olympic Rush to Rebuild L.A.
Vigliotti, Jonathan
Hardcover