Lee Siegel's Against the Machine and the Digital World

Title: Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob.

I want to explore the more human side of digital culture, what media people use, how, why, and how they create, share, and interact in digital worlds. I am told that  Lee Siegel's Against the Machine is about how the internet has changed humanity's minds and culture.  The categories of technology, communications, and commerce are now so intertwined that it is hard to tell where one begins and another ends.  The fact that there are loss of distinctions and challenges to human identity is important to me. What is Siegel's argument and is he right?  How has the digital changed human culture?

Preview:
In the Introuction, Siegel comes right out and identifies a reciprocal relationship between human culture and the internet.  He also identifies himself as a cultural critic with the mantra "Things really don't have to be the way they are."  From what I gather from the rest of the book, Siegel isn't trying so much to debunk myths about internet culture (which he does in some cases) as he is to put the internet in a human context. It is obvious that he's trying to make you think twice about the mainstream, but does he actually propose any viable solutions?  Maybe I saw one while skimming through but didn't realize it was what I was looking for.  Siegel uses a lot of snappy chapter titles and sub-headings and frequent pop culture examples throughout the text--something I think I might enjoy.

Social Proof:
Posted a new discussion on Goodreads exactly three hours ago.  No activity.  Shared update on Google +.  No activity.  Shared Facebook status.  No activity. Guess I should have gone on Twitter after all.

But tonight's episode of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had an interesting storyline.  Skye (our hacker heroine) reunites with an ex-boyfriend/fellow hacktivist whose name I think is Miles.  Skye defends Miles from her new friends by saying that he is an idealist who believes in the freedom of ideas...but then her friends find out that he sold information to an evil organization for a million dollars.  Skye is definitely turned off (as she should be) but Miles defends himself by saying that he can't make a living off his beliefs in free expression alone. I recall Siegel discussing the ideas about information democracy in his book.   Not exactly social proof, or maybe it's social proof from Joss Whedon. Maybe I should watch out for copyright wars information and get more info on that.  What is Siegel's position? How does this tie into digital culture?

Friends of Against the Machine.
To Amazon first.   Top results:  Siegel wrote Harvard is Burning and Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination.  This latter option intrigues me. Item added to wish list.  Siegel also wrote Are You Serious?  How to Be True and Get Real in the Age of Silly.  Siegel appears to be an authority on contemporary/digital culture.  His books are linked to books debating the relationship between technology and society.  En route to Google Books I notice that on the search for "against the machine lee siegel" my Google + post from early is number eleven on google search--that's either really good or really bad. The Google books link is right above that, number 10.  The only repeated author on either Amazon or Google is Siegel himself.  Siegel also wrote Not Remotely Controlled, Fires of Love--Waters of Peace, iand Love and the Incredibly Old Man, a novel. His non-fiction books are very culture oriented.

The Social Context
On Google +, it's quality over quantity.  Two years ago, someone shared a video of a TED talk related to the ideas in Siegel's book.  And just over a year ago someone shared to a link of an article by Siegel talking about parenting issues in technology use. 

Twitter Search: No one has talked about this book on twitter since 2011.  The very bottom tweet called it "the first credible book to criticize the digital age."  Found a tumblr link that quotes an email saying Siegel argues that the digital age has turned "privacy into performance, play into commerce, and confused 'self-expression' with art".  Found a link to a very negative amateur review that will be revisited later.  The author himself is very active on Twitter. 

Formal Reviews:
The New York Times 2008 book review reveals that Against the Machine was written in response to a controversy over being "pilloried" by the web because he "respond[ed] to comments about him posted on his blog at The New Republic’s Web site." Ouch.  Am I supposed to expect an angry rant? "Siegel sees the Internet as 'the first social environment to serve the needs of the isolated, elevated, asocial individual.'" That makes sense.  The reviewer points out the fallacy that Siegel neglects the internet culture outside of the US and is overly displeased with Siegel's biased, angry stance.  Lower on the Google search page is a link to a review by the Technology Liberation Front, an organization with a communist color scheme on their website and dedicated to keeping the government off the internet and out of all things technology.  There is a review of Against the Machine individually as well as grouped with other books about optimistic and pessimistic views about the internet, which is also linked to another article about internet optimists and pessimists in general. On this site, Adam Thierer argues that the debate over new technologies and their impact on society is nothing new, in fact it is cyclical.  He divides thinkers into "optimist" and "pessimist" camps.  He argues that the optimists are in the lead but need to be a little less romantic, and that the pessimists need to be less hysterical.  Thierer argues that the preferred approach ought to be "pragmatic optimism."  Thierer catagorizes Siegel as a pessimist along with these titles I have heard before: Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur,  Nick Carr's The Shallows, and Jaron Lanier's You Are Not A Gadget.  Thierer categorizes pessimists as believing that the internet is polarizing, fragmentary, and anti-democratic. Thierer describes Against the Machine as "the dourest of the recent books that have adopted a pessimistic view of the impact the Internet is having on our culture, society, and economy" but also "one of the most important technology policy books of 2008."  According to Thierer, Siegel is concerned about the loss of truth and authority on the internet, views user-generated content with contempt, and that most people want money/recognition from their internet activities.  Thierer accuses Siegel of not looking at the benefits of Web 2.0. Professional reviewers are quoted on Amazon as praising his writing style the most.

Informal Reviews:
First, the Review I found on Twitter:  Sarah D. Bunting on Tomato Nation in 2011. Bunting also takes issue with Siegel's negativity.  Most Goodreads reviews gave Against the Machine a rating of 3 stars or less.  The top reviewer on Goodreads states that Siegel's argument is that the internet is using us and the commercial Web has an agenda to take advantage of us, and the text fails to deliver on the promising title.  Even the most positive reviewer argued that he could have used more positive examples.  Another reviewer says he contradicts himself at times--well, there could be a trickster element to this book, I wouldn't be surprised.  Most Google Books readers gave it a 3 stars or less rating.  The average rating on Amazon is 3.5 stars.  The most helpful review called it "a cautionary tale."  The Amazon reviewers believe this book had a potenitally good idea that failed.  Ouchihuahua.

Can't find anything on Against the Machine in college courses.

Multimedia
I have already found this YouTube video and a Newsweek Article .  Here is an interview  Siegel did with New York Magazine.  It turns out the YouTube video is a TED talk. The speaker said that the internet's algorithms are tailored so that we get personalized search results rather than access to a variety of information, news, and entertainment.  He uses the phrase "internet of one" towards the end of his speech.  The reason I found this video was because the girl who linked it said that Against the Machine predicted it.  While this is true economically, this could also be a model for internet behavior in general.  The Newsweek article is about parental involvement in children's online safety, and includes a video interview with Siegel himself.  The argument is that children's internet activities do need to be monitored by parents, that children are just as vulnerable to online marketing as to online predators, but sometimes parents are also caught unawares in internet activities and put their children at risk.  Unfortunately the video will not play.  As for the interview, Siegel says he wishes people would get over the blog incident that led to his writing the book in the first place.  He says, "I love the Internet, I’m on it all the time. I couldn’t have written the book so quickly without it. But I think that its claims for greater social connectivity are a sham. I don’t think it’s making people more connected than they were before, not at all."  He is not opposed to amateurs but hates how the internet treats all amateurs like professionals.  So perhaps he is not quite as pessimistic as the reviewers think--he's just picky. He is pointing out what he thinks the internet is doing wrong.

1 Hour's Worth of Reading
In the space of an hour, I read chapters 3, 4, and 7.  True to the reviews, Siegel is always going back to how the Internet was made for marketing and how people who "express themselves" online are really just rehashing what someone else has said in order to gain popularity and sell their leisure time.  I would definitely classify Siegel as a pessimist.  He is trying to be objective, but he is constantly returning to the same ideas.  This book is part book review of other works on the internet and modern culture and part tempered rant.  But he does say a few things that I could look into, stuff about the nature of art and remix, and also about the real "freedom" of the internet experience. 

My Thinking So Far:
I wish I'd read something else. Siegel is informative but not objective.  I wanted something a little deeper.  I think I would still like to read this book but I want to find other books with differing or at least tempered viewpoints.