COMMENTARY ON BURN BOOK BY KARA SWISHER
Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher will appeal to both tech geeks as well as readers of history.. For the geeks, the author pokes holes in the overinflated egos of many tech titans. For historians, the book untangles the giddy mayhem of the early "dot.com" craze and traces how gee-whiz tech “bros” morphed into avaricious, dominating juggernauts. But beyond the geeks and historian readers, this is a book which raises important issues that can affect the current presidential campaigns and how Americans will or will not vote.
Author Kara Swisher is an American journalist who has covered all things digital since 1994 when she interviewed Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, for the Washington Post. Immediately smitten with the digital world, she understood its possibilities and predicted its takeover of the old print and telecommunication industries. Since then she has written for several prestigious news outlets and hosted several major conferences on the evolving tech world.
Besides her eyewitness accounts of the early days of the tech industry, this book is partly a memoir in which Swisher explains how the personal challenges she faced in her past better prepared her to be a journalist. She admits plainly that “this is a book about me and tech, a relationship that started as a meet-cute love story and then turned sour over time.”
Her keen insight, natural skepticism, and deep knowledge of the digital tools that started pouring out of Silicon Valley enabled her to recognize early on the enormous impact the digital revolution would have on almost every aspect of our daily lives. At first, she faced dismissive rejections of her prediction that the digital world would soon take over the major news, music, film, and TV industries. But as the memoir portion of the book shows, she had had many experiences growing up and as a young journalist which led her to be a stickler for the facts and not cowed by the overheated egos of newly minted tech billionaires. Because she was on board at the start of digital content, she developed the knowledge and insight to call out various tech giants like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg; at one point she even told Jeff Bezos that Amazon isn’t a real tech company, it’s just “a souped up logistics company. (Hence the title Burn Book, a term from the movie Mean Girls that refers to a book filled with deprecating remarks about classmates) She does not pull punches exposing the mega-rich tech bros, especially for their failures to control the rising problem of disinformation and propaganda spread by their platforms. At the birth of the digital world in the 90s, the inventors had spoken of their auspicious dreams, the service to humanity, and the benefits of connectedness with each new tool. But after the tsunami of money flowed to these masters of the digital universe, their focus shifted. Ever the canary in the tech coal mine, Swisher rails at the masters’ increasing practice of sucking up personal information and content for their own gain calling them “‘information thieves’” for making huge profits on content and material they did not themselves produce.
Swisher warns that with the entrance of AI, the digital age is once again moving into uncharted water. Her concern is that the guardrails that guide and control other big industries are lacking in the digital world where currently there are “no privacy protections, no updated antitrust laws, no algorithmic transparency requirement, no focus on addiction and mental impact.” The news industry, initially regulated under the Fairness Act and required to give equal coverage to differing political views, exploded with disinformation after Reagan repealed the act in 1987. The new guidelines, elevating profits over fair reporting, led to the proliferation of rancorous radio and TV shows because news of impending disaster, whether real or manufactured, draws more viewers and thereby more dollars from sponsors.
This is an important book in the upcoming election because of the documented effect that disinformation can have on the voting process. Swisher accuses the tech giants of hypocrisy; they say they are supporting free speech, but they are comfortable with their platforms being used to sell disinformation since vitriol draws more eyes and therefore more profit. Unfortunately, because Americans tend to equate expertise in general with one’s bank account, media outlets like to interview the mega-rich tech giants for their opinions on pressing world matters like Covid, Gaza, or Ukraine as though they are also experts on politics and public policy. Sad to say, many Americans will take the opinions of the tech giants at face value and perceive them as credible, which is like lemmings relying on directions from wolves.
Where innovation and creativity spurred the early digital industry, most of the “work” the tech titans do now centers on making sure nothing stands in the way of profit. They flocked to a meeting in December 2016 called by then President Trump because he expressed support and protection for their industry. And now, in the current election cycle, the typically liberal Silicon Valley is showing greater support for the Trump/Vance ticket in terms of donations because of the campaign’s hands-off attitude to their industry. In other words, they are directing these enormous campaign donations to whichever candidate will assure the most laissez-faire approach. The entrance of AI into the tech world and (thereby into politics) is particularly worrisome precisely because this industry is not regulated. For example, Elon Musk recently released a deep fake video to mock a presidential candidate, dismissing his own company’s policy that posters “may not share synthetic, manipulated, or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm.” And yet--there is it on his Twitter (X) feed--an AI-generated video in which Kamala Harris appears to say things counter to her own campaign. Musk, as the CEO and behemoth figure in the tech world, later said it was just a joke. For her part, Swisher acknowledges that the launch of AI tools into the digital ocean is taking us into uncharted waters. Her take is this: “‘Will AI kill us?’ I can only answer at this moment now that I’m not as afraid of AI as I am fearful of bad people who will use AI better than good people.”
It’s all about the guardrails and protections that will keep the public safe from powerful figures who subscribe to the “move fast and break things” code. Swisher, despite being the bête noire of the tech industry, demonstrates the potential abuses that the digital world and its purveyors pose to free and fair elections for Americans. We should take note.
Virus-free.www.avast.com