Techlash: Who Makes the Rules in the Digital Gilded Age?: Tom Wheeler: Brookings Institution Press

Techlash

Who Makes the Rules in the Digital Gilded Age?

Techlash

Who Makes the Rules in the Digital Gilded Age?

Description

Hailed by Publishers Weekly as "a potent primer on the need to rein in big tech" and Kirkus Reviews as "a rock-solid plan for controlling the tech giants," readers will be energized by Tom Wheeler's vision of digital governance.”

Featured on Barack Obama's 11/3/23 list of "What I’m Reading on the Rise of Artificial Intelligence"

An accessible and visionary book that connects the experiences of the late 19th century’s industrial Gilded Age with its echoes in the 21st century digital Gilded Age...

Hailed by Ken Burns as one of the foremost “explainers” of technology and its effect throughout history, Tom Wheeler now turns his gaze to the public impact of entrepreneurial innovation. In Techlash, he connects the experiences of the late 19th century’s industrial Gilded Age with its echoes in the 21st-century digital Gilded Age. In both cases, technological innovation and the great wealth that it created ran up against the public interest and the rights of others. As with the Industrial Revolution and the Gilded Age that it created, new digital technology has changed commerce and culture, creating great wealth in the process, all while being essentially unsupervised.

Warning that today is not the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” some envision, Wheeler calls for a new era of public interest oversight that leaves behind industrial-era regulatory ideas to embrace a new process of agile, supervised, and enforced code setting that protects consumers and competition while encouraging continued innovation. Wheeler combines insights from his experience at the highest echelons of business and government to create a compelling portrait of the need to balance entrepreneurial innovation with the public good.

“Once again, Tom Wheeler makes sense out of the dizzying technological changes that often seem to initially befuddle and beset us before they come into sharper focus, a focus he brings to each page and each new idea. . . it sometimes takes an original thinker to make clearer the “mess” in front of us. Bravo!" — Ken Burns

Preface
Section One: Our Moment In History
Chapter One – Echoes Of The Gilded Age
Chapter Two – This Is Not The “Fourth Industrial Revolution”
Chapter Three – Closing The Open Internet
Chapter Four – You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet!
Section Two: Who Makes The Rules?
Chapter Five – When Innovators Make The Rules
Chapter Six – The World’s Greatest Business Model
Chapter Seven – Where Is The Watchdog?
Section Three: Reasserting The Public Interest
Chapter Eight – Designing Behavioral Expectations
Chapter Nine – Privacy By Design
Chapter Ten – Competition By Design
Chapter Eleven – Truth And Trust By Design
Section Four: Consequences We Control
Chapter Twelve – Time To Make History Again
Acknowledgments

Product details

Published	Oct 15 2023
Format	Hardback
Edition	1st
Extent	264
ISBN	9780815739937
Imprint	Brookings Institution Press
Illustrations	7 b/w illustrations
Dimensions	9 x 6 inches
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

Lax regulation has allowed the most powerful tech companies to become 'pseudo-governments' imposing their will on the public, according to this impassioned broadside. Wheeler, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission during the Obama administration, draws parallels between the Gilded Age and the present, noting that the income inequality and market concentration that characterize both eras were ameliorated in the 19th century by 'antitrust law and regulatory oversight.' Advocating for the use of similar tools to curtail the power of Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook), and Microsoft, Wheeler warns that these companies have been implementing invasive data collecting and other problematic practices with few means for users to push back. Wheeler persuasively makes the case that tech CEOs can’t be trusted to regulate themselves.... It’s a potent primer on the need to rein in big tech.

Publishers Weekly
A detailed, well-researched rundown of the runaway tech sector. Wheeler is a former chairman of the Federal Communication Corporation and a successful venture capitalist, so when it comes to regulation of the tech giants that dominate the U.S. economy, he is a person whose voice should be heard. In this follow-up to From Gutenberg to Google, the author argues that the past few decades are similar to the Gilded Age following the Civil War, when powerful barons built enormous wealth by harnessing new technologies. They used their power to bury potential competitors and intimidate politicians, but they met their match in Theodore Roosevelt, who broke up the monopolies and established a regulatory system. Wheeler sees enough similarities to draw useful lessons for ways to leash the tech beasts, and he presents a host of proposals. A crucial move would be to ensure that competition can flourish through a rewriting of the outmoded regulations and laws to shift the emphasis from technical rules to behavioral standards. The liability rules for social media companies must be revised with the public interest, not corporations, in mind. Wheeler believes that there is currently a window of opportunity created by a high level of community distrust of big tech. This might be true, but it is by no means clear that the distrust translates into an organized impetus for increased regulation, which would mean a period of disruption. Moreover, the tech behemoths have invested billions in political protection. At the moment, there are no Rooseveltian figures on either side of the political spectrum. Wheeler’s ideas are important, and policymakers should read this book carefully. Finding the courage to act on it, however, does not seem likely. With a firm sense of history and an eye on the future, Wheeler lays out a rock-solid plan for controlling the tech giants.

Kirkus Reviews
Once again, Tom Wheeler makes sense out of the dizzying technological changes that often seem to initially befuddle and beset us before they come into sharper focus, a focus he brings to each page and each new idea. Wheeler understands in his bones that “what is past is prologue,” and so he correctly anchors the new in the context of what has taken place before. Ecclesiastes is always right: “There’s nothing new under the sun,” but it sometimes takes an original thinker to make clearer the “mess” in front of us. Bravo!

Ken Burns
In this tour de force, Tom Wheeler not only unpacks the challenges that the new gilded age poses to consumer privacy, competition, truth, and trust but also highlights ways to safeguard them and us. An eye-opening guide to a more hopeful future!

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director, Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania
Tom Wheeler is one of the major global players on Technology and Media regulation in the 21st century. Techlash is a powerful book that speaks to some of the most important issues facing our society. Wheeler's expertise as both a business leader and America's top media regulator offers a unique and trenchant perspective that makes this a must read for anyone concerned about technology's impact on our lives... and on our children's lives.

James P. Steyer, CEO and founder of Common Sense Media, Stanford Professor and bestselling author
The clarion call by Tom Wheeler for a new model of governance in the Internet age demands our attention. Wheeler's thoughtful case for agile oversight is grounded in history and should be read by all who care about public policy.

Phil Weiser, Attorney General of Colorado