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Beyond the Valley: How Innovators around the World are Overcoming Inequality and Creating the Technologies of Tomorrow
How to repair the disconnect between designers and users, producers and consumers, and tech elites and the rest of us: toward a more democratic internet.
In this provocative book, Ramesh Srinivasan describes the internet as both an enabler of frictionless efficiency and a dirty tangle of politics, economics, and other inefficient, inharmonious human activities. We may love the immediacy of Google search results, the convenience of buying from Amazon, and the elegance and power of our Apple devices, but it's a one-way, top-down process. We're not asked for our input, or our opinions—only for our data. The internet is brought to us by wealthy technologists in Silicon Valley and China. It's time, Srinivasan argues, that we think in terms beyond the Valley.
Srinivasan focuses on the disconnection he sees between designers and users, producers and consumers, and tech elites and the rest of us. The recent Cambridge Analytica and Russian misinformation scandals exemplify the imbalance of a digital world that puts profits before inclusivity and democracy. In search of a more democratic internet, Srinivasan takes us to the mountains of Oaxaca, East and West Africa, China, Scandinavia, North America, and elsewhere, visiting the “design labs” of rural, low-income, and indigenous people around the world. He talks to a range of high-profile public figures—including Elizabeth Warren, David Axelrod, Eric Holder, Noam Chomsky, Lawrence Lessig, and the founders of Reddit, as well as community organizers, labor leaders, and human rights activists.. To make a better internet, Srinivasan says, we need a new ethic of diversity, openness, and inclusivity, empowering those now excluded from decisions about how technologies are designed, who profits from them, and who are surveilled and exploited by them.
In this provocative book, Ramesh Srinivasan describes the internet as both an enabler of frictionless efficiency and a dirty tangle of politics, economics, and other inefficient, inharmonious human activities. We may love the immediacy of Google search results, the convenience of buying from Amazon, and the elegance and power of our Apple devices, but it's a one-way, top-down process. We're not asked for our input, or our opinions—only for our data. The internet is brought to us by wealthy technologists in Silicon Valley and China. It's time, Srinivasan argues, that we think in terms beyond the Valley.
Srinivasan focuses on the disconnection he sees between designers and users, producers and consumers, and tech elites and the rest of us. The recent Cambridge Analytica and Russian misinformation scandals exemplify the imbalance of a digital world that puts profits before inclusivity and democracy. In search of a more democratic internet, Srinivasan takes us to the mountains of Oaxaca, East and West Africa, China, Scandinavia, North America, and elsewhere, visiting the “design labs” of rural, low-income, and indigenous people around the world. He talks to a range of high-profile public figures—including Elizabeth Warren, David Axelrod, Eric Holder, Noam Chomsky, Lawrence Lessig, and the founders of Reddit, as well as community organizers, labor leaders, and human rights activists.. To make a better internet, Srinivasan says, we need a new ethic of diversity, openness, and inclusivity, empowering those now excluded from decisions about how technologies are designed, who profits from them, and who are surveilled and exploited by them.
424 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2019
33 people are currently reading
501 people want to read
About the author
Ramesh Srinivasan
14 books18 followersRamesh Srinivasan is Professor of Information Studies and Design Media Arts at UCLA. He makes regular appearances on NPR, The Young Turks, MSNBC, and Public Radio International, and his writings have been published in the Washington Post, Quartz, Huffington Post, CNN, and elsewhere.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
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June 18, 2020This is a broad introduction to the issues caused or exacerbated by big tech dominance--personal intrustion, political manipulation, economic precarity and gig jobs, inequality-- and practical solutions to surmount at least some of these problems.
December 6, 2019
Excellent analysis of how tech has become just like any other industry - focused on making money over all else. Can this guy run for office or something? He’s so clear headed, logical, and most importantly compassionate. He’s got my vote!
January 20, 2020
In equal parts alarming and encouraging, this highly readable book shows how major parts of the world are underserved by technologies developed in the West. The key problem is that our engineers have biases that unintentionally or intentionally make a technology useless or worse outside the spheres that the engineers are most familiar with. As part of the solution, technicians and amateurs in those underserved areas are responding by developing their own more suitable technologies.
The sheer number of examples drawn first-hand from different parts of the developing world, accompanied by the sheer number of interviews conducted with knowledgeable and important people from all over, makes for really compelling reading.
The sheer number of examples drawn first-hand from different parts of the developing world, accompanied by the sheer number of interviews conducted with knowledgeable and important people from all over, makes for really compelling reading.
August 9, 2020
Fascinating, thought provoking view of the current world of technology, almost entirely controlled by the 'Big Five', huge increasingly integrated companies driven by profit with virtually no oversight by national or local governments, no transparency and no accountability to anyone except shareholders.
Their ability to rapidly build and manipulate huge amounts of individual, personal, data for profit, or for anything else in their own interests (think major influence of election results!) is very scary, and is a current reality.
"In just the last three decades, a few folks in Silicon Valley (and to a lesser extent, in China) have managed to re-engineer our society, our governments, and even how we feel, behave and think about ourselves".
The book details several areas which provide us with optimism for the future, but the challenge to chart a path from (an obscenely huge) profit based system to one where we can all have voice and power over the technologies of our present and future, is an immense one.
While parts of the book are quite detailed and can be heavy going, this is a worthwhile read - for all of us.
Their ability to rapidly build and manipulate huge amounts of individual, personal, data for profit, or for anything else in their own interests (think major influence of election results!) is very scary, and is a current reality.
"In just the last three decades, a few folks in Silicon Valley (and to a lesser extent, in China) have managed to re-engineer our society, our governments, and even how we feel, behave and think about ourselves".
The book details several areas which provide us with optimism for the future, but the challenge to chart a path from (an obscenely huge) profit based system to one where we can all have voice and power over the technologies of our present and future, is an immense one.
While parts of the book are quite detailed and can be heavy going, this is a worthwhile read - for all of us.
December 18, 2020
Not an easy read but the author hits on many topics essential to understanding technology in the current geo political environment
December 1, 2020
This book has an interesting premise. There's a lot written these days on how the use of personal data by big tech companies creates all kinds of problems, from social polarization to further embedding discrimination in the algorithms that increasingly control our lives. In Beyond The Valley, Ramesh Srinivasan does an effective job documenting these issues, and also offers us alternative models of bottom-up, more equitable network relationships, from Indigenous communities in Mexico to flood-prone neighbourhoods in Brooklyn to innovation hubs in East Africa that promote re-use of devices typically discarded after a couple years.
For much of the book, I wished Srinivasan would have spent more time on his research regarding these collective networks. At this point, there are numerous books and Netflix documentaries exploring the pitfalls of entrusting our digital futures to the Googles, Amazons, and Facebooks of the world. Spending 2/3 of the book on this topic seemed like it was beating a dead horse, especially as the author mainly cited other people's research, or briefly touched on high-level points that he discussed with policymakers (though his story of meeting Vicente Fox on an airplane was pretty cool).
By the last third of the book, we finally get into Srinivasan's core expertise, and I felt that this part truly provided some original insights. It was very interesting to read about the Zapotec and Mixtec people's experience with a community-based internet system, and the author doesn't shy away from pointing out some difficult questions about its prospects for continued survival (at some point, the network risks becoming a victim of its own success when large telecom companies notice the demand for connectivity). It just took a long time to get to these nuggets, and the reader has to wade through a lot of repeated, breezy messages about how big tech companies are bad before arriving at this point.
I did appreciate one consistent question that Srinivasan raises to connect the various parts of this book: We often speak of the desire for connectivity, but what kinds of connectivity do we truly want? He makes a mostly persuasive case that we don't have to accept connectivity on the terms of a few wealthy corporations, but that we can imagine different forms of relationships that might be more enriching to our shared humanity.
For much of the book, I wished Srinivasan would have spent more time on his research regarding these collective networks. At this point, there are numerous books and Netflix documentaries exploring the pitfalls of entrusting our digital futures to the Googles, Amazons, and Facebooks of the world. Spending 2/3 of the book on this topic seemed like it was beating a dead horse, especially as the author mainly cited other people's research, or briefly touched on high-level points that he discussed with policymakers (though his story of meeting Vicente Fox on an airplane was pretty cool).
By the last third of the book, we finally get into Srinivasan's core expertise, and I felt that this part truly provided some original insights. It was very interesting to read about the Zapotec and Mixtec people's experience with a community-based internet system, and the author doesn't shy away from pointing out some difficult questions about its prospects for continued survival (at some point, the network risks becoming a victim of its own success when large telecom companies notice the demand for connectivity). It just took a long time to get to these nuggets, and the reader has to wade through a lot of repeated, breezy messages about how big tech companies are bad before arriving at this point.
I did appreciate one consistent question that Srinivasan raises to connect the various parts of this book: We often speak of the desire for connectivity, but what kinds of connectivity do we truly want? He makes a mostly persuasive case that we don't have to accept connectivity on the terms of a few wealthy corporations, but that we can imagine different forms of relationships that might be more enriching to our shared humanity.
January 11, 2021
Beyond the Valley: How Innovators around the World are Overcoming Inequality and Creating the Technologies of Tomorrow is an important look at what’s wrong with the internet’s control by Big Tech. UCLA information studies professor Ramesh Srinivasan also offers practical examples of possible remedies.
The first part of the book is all about the disasters we’ve uncovered in recent years. Remember when right-wing political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica took data generated from millions of Facebook “personality tests” to develop profiles for micro-targeted advertising. Those profiles then helped Brexit campaigners in the United Kingdom and Donald Trump in the US.
You will also get reviews of Google’s journey away from its original “don’t be evil” motto, Amazon’s bullying of vendors, union-busting activities and tax evasion, Apple’s attempts to dominate how you listen to music, and a variety of problems with artificial intelligence
Srinavasan warns that the technology companies will always choose profits over people. The history to date has not been positive.
As robots replace more workers, companies have no interest in how those replaced workers will survive. He suggests that a universal basic income (UBI) such as that proposed by 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang may mitigate the problem.
Perhaps you read about Amazon’s Rekognition facial recognition software. The ACLU of Northern California compared a database of criminal mugshots with photos of members of Congress. Srinavasan writes “For Congress as a whole the error rate was 5 percent, but for nonwhite members of Congress the error rate was 39 percent.”
Problems with technology and the internet aren’t limited to North America, of course. Repressive regimes use a variety of techniques and policies to enforce their rule. Srinavasan especially attacks China’s surveillance state and its social credit regime. The latter is the government’s policy of monitoring people’s behavior online and assigns “credit scores” to determine how well you contribute to society. Cross the government too often, or associate with people who do, and suddenly you can’t ride the bus as often.
Srinavasan explains: “A poor credit score that comes from expressing ‘bad’ speech online, smoking cigarettes, or playing too many video games could result in a range of punishments, from losing one’s freedom to travel, to public humiliation.”
Beyond the Valley isn’t all gloom and doom. The last part of the book looks to a variety of potential solutions, and alternative visions, to promote democratic control of the internet.
Among the options described:
- Building more and better community-based networks, such as Detroit’s Community Technology Project and Catalonia’s Guifi.net
- Platform cooperativism, an idea that promotes digital workers cooperative platforms
- a homegrown university-based AI research project in Uganda
- BRCK, a technology startup in Kenya aiming to create cheap boxes for easy, free internet connections.
- The Indigenous Community Telecommunications (TIC) network based in southern Mexico
Those of us who have been watching the movement for a (re)decentralized internet know that some enthusiasm for this idea comes from Libertarian circles, who hope to finance (and profit from) a decentralized web on the blockchain.
Srinavasan and journalist Adam Reese collaborated on a chapter about blockchain. They describe several projects and conclude (like me) that “We have no illusions about blockchain saving the world. All the same, these networks’ decentralized architectures make them potentially valuable tools for building grassroots solutions that support the needs of ordinary users. … we’ll keep our eyes open for emerging voices and continue to listen to those who talk past the hype.”
As with any academic work, Beyond the Valley is extensively documented with books, articles (both journalistic and scholarly), and web links (though I wish he had included more links to the projects and organizations he’s covered). Yet it is easy enough to read for most people.
Srinavasan doesn’t offer any panaceas, but some hopes for the future. . If you have any curiosity about how to solve the problems and inadequacies of the internet, it’s worth reading. I expect to be mining that bibliography for a while.
The first part of the book is all about the disasters we’ve uncovered in recent years. Remember when right-wing political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica took data generated from millions of Facebook “personality tests” to develop profiles for micro-targeted advertising. Those profiles then helped Brexit campaigners in the United Kingdom and Donald Trump in the US.
You will also get reviews of Google’s journey away from its original “don’t be evil” motto, Amazon’s bullying of vendors, union-busting activities and tax evasion, Apple’s attempts to dominate how you listen to music, and a variety of problems with artificial intelligence
Srinavasan warns that the technology companies will always choose profits over people. The history to date has not been positive.
As robots replace more workers, companies have no interest in how those replaced workers will survive. He suggests that a universal basic income (UBI) such as that proposed by 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang may mitigate the problem.
Perhaps you read about Amazon’s Rekognition facial recognition software. The ACLU of Northern California compared a database of criminal mugshots with photos of members of Congress. Srinavasan writes “For Congress as a whole the error rate was 5 percent, but for nonwhite members of Congress the error rate was 39 percent.”
Problems with technology and the internet aren’t limited to North America, of course. Repressive regimes use a variety of techniques and policies to enforce their rule. Srinavasan especially attacks China’s surveillance state and its social credit regime. The latter is the government’s policy of monitoring people’s behavior online and assigns “credit scores” to determine how well you contribute to society. Cross the government too often, or associate with people who do, and suddenly you can’t ride the bus as often.
Srinavasan explains: “A poor credit score that comes from expressing ‘bad’ speech online, smoking cigarettes, or playing too many video games could result in a range of punishments, from losing one’s freedom to travel, to public humiliation.”
Beyond the Valley isn’t all gloom and doom. The last part of the book looks to a variety of potential solutions, and alternative visions, to promote democratic control of the internet.
Among the options described:
- Building more and better community-based networks, such as Detroit’s Community Technology Project and Catalonia’s Guifi.net
- Platform cooperativism, an idea that promotes digital workers cooperative platforms
- a homegrown university-based AI research project in Uganda
- BRCK, a technology startup in Kenya aiming to create cheap boxes for easy, free internet connections.
- The Indigenous Community Telecommunications (TIC) network based in southern Mexico
Those of us who have been watching the movement for a (re)decentralized internet know that some enthusiasm for this idea comes from Libertarian circles, who hope to finance (and profit from) a decentralized web on the blockchain.
Srinavasan and journalist Adam Reese collaborated on a chapter about blockchain. They describe several projects and conclude (like me) that “We have no illusions about blockchain saving the world. All the same, these networks’ decentralized architectures make them potentially valuable tools for building grassroots solutions that support the needs of ordinary users. … we’ll keep our eyes open for emerging voices and continue to listen to those who talk past the hype.”
As with any academic work, Beyond the Valley is extensively documented with books, articles (both journalistic and scholarly), and web links (though I wish he had included more links to the projects and organizations he’s covered). Yet it is easy enough to read for most people.
Srinavasan doesn’t offer any panaceas, but some hopes for the future. . If you have any curiosity about how to solve the problems and inadequacies of the internet, it’s worth reading. I expect to be mining that bibliography for a while.
November 22, 2020
3.5
A good survey of the inequalities and harms perpetuated by big tech, global counterexamples of socially beneficial innovation and key technologies like AI and blockchain to continue paying attention to.
As a user, I found the call to action abstract; as a designer, I would have liked a discussion on existing examples of participatory design that have and/or haven't created good, and how the ubiquitous product mindset that tech teams are shaped around has helped and/or harmed inclusion and equity.
Unrelated: the lack of copyediting throughout was pretty distracting.
A good survey of the inequalities and harms perpetuated by big tech, global counterexamples of socially beneficial innovation and key technologies like AI and blockchain to continue paying attention to.
As a user, I found the call to action abstract; as a designer, I would have liked a discussion on existing examples of participatory design that have and/or haven't created good, and how the ubiquitous product mindset that tech teams are shaped around has helped and/or harmed inclusion and equity.
Unrelated: the lack of copyediting throughout was pretty distracting.
February 23, 2021
Warning, this is a dense read. You will find many facts and deep coverage of technical material. Should you read it? A few powerful technology companies generally based out of Silicon Valley dominate with “top down, extractive, and conquering” practices. There are other ways. We can practice more collaborative technology. As a teacher I view this from the instructive view where digital literacies become even more important. We need to know more behind the tech, it is not enough to just accept what we are given.
December 27, 2021
A strong criticism of the tech companies that run the modern world (Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook). Certainly, many areas in which these companies need to improve from diversity and inclusion to environmental impact.
February 29, 2020
Disappointing.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews