System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot

If your are involved in technology in any way, as a creator or as a user, this is a must read. What motivates tech companies and the people who create them? Answers here. Even more importantly, this book explains why if matters and how getting a handle on technology is critical for maintaining our democracy.THe authors are experts not just academics but people who have worked in the industry and in government. Yet things are explained in a way that is approachable for just about anyone. This book will make you think.

One tends to despair when faced with the enormity of the problems brought on by the excesses of social media and the enormous power of the big tech bosses. This book fills in the knowledge we non-techie people are lacking—along with some of the behind the scenes stuff we’ve missed—so that we can legitimately hope for more sensible control and governance of big tech and social media in the future.

This is an académico book that poses many important questions and highlights failed frameworks to date to answer those questions. The path proposed for the future is a Return to a level of organizational strength of the past but that seems very un likely for our future.

The range of material that this book covers is insane! The authors pull back the curtain on several ethical and political issues involving big tech companies. If you want to understand better exactly how big tech controls the lives of most everyone on earth (at least to some extent), then you need to read this book.

Very informative read with tech, ethical and philosophical content. Liked the balanced view on AI

My daughter really enjoyed receiving this book, for the content and because she admires the authors.

The three authors of this book are all top academics at Stanford -- one a philosopher, another a computer scientist, and the third a political scientist -- with a special academic interest in "Big Tech". They call themselves "experts who have worked at ground zero of the tech revolution for decades".The three authors have taught a course at Stanford (very popular, of course) on the topics covered in this book. In the book, they insist that Big Tech has sacrificed our fundamental human values to their goals of optimization and efficiency. They demand that we fight Big Tech to renew our democracy and save ourselves.The three authors and their book remind me a lot of Shoshana Zuboff and her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. A professor emerita of Harvard Business School, Shoshana Zuboff sees a big problem with the business model of the Big Tech companies. She sees grave damage being done by them to the foundation of our social and political structures.Myself, I think the problems these people see are overblown, and the solutions they propose as the cure being worse than the disease. It's a lot like the "net neutrality" that the authors write about as being such an important step when taken in 2015. To me, that was a solution that would never work to a problem that did not exist.We do have problems in this country that our government could help solve. But government can only do so much. We need to be careful to focus on problems where the government can help, and make sure that the solutions we adopt have been tried and found to work. These three authors do neither.

“System Error” is a remarkable opportunity to access an incredible teaching team, directly and entertainingly walking you through some of the biggest challenges and opportunities in the big tech space. Each author (computer scientist, government practitioner, philosopher) brings a unique and complementary perspective to this work – a true testament to the power of writing in teams. From the unique vantage point of Silicon Valley, the authors share firsthand perspective and anecdotes on some of the most urgent challenges to American democracy today: algorithms, data privacy, free speech, and market regulation of our information ecosystem. Throughout, they offer probing questions for reflection as both voters and consumers of social media, and a variety of practical, real-world solutions for action. This is a must read for anyone interested in the health of America's democracy.

The authors detail where the Big Tech went wrong and how to reboot. They discuss the ethic of new technology and in particular AI, and how democracies can regulate effectively the Big Tech.