The Control Revolution

How the Internet is Putting Individuals in Charge and Changing the World We Know

by Andrew Shapiro

Andrew Shapiro has written a new book that almost perfectly -- and presciently -- captures the big idea about the Internet right now: In "The Control Revolution," he describes how the Net is putting individuals in charge of their lives and changing the world.

There are lots of books these days about the Net and the Web - what they mean, how we're drowning in too much information, how memes move around, how to design websites, make money off of e-trading, use C+++, install Linux.

But only a handful nail the big ideas down as well as Andrew L. Shapiro has in "The Control Revolution: How the Internet is Putting Individuals in Charge and Changing the World We Know" (Public Affairs Books, $US 25).

"The Control Revolution" isn't exactly a stirring term for what the Net and the Web are doing to life, but Shapiro is right. The Web is a series of social as well as technological revolutions. His definitions of the "Control" part make sense:

l. The potentially monumental shift in control from institutions to individuals made possible by new technology such as the Net.

2. The conflict over such change between individuals and powerful entities (governments, corporations, the media).

3. The unexpected, and not always desirable, ways in which such change could reshape our lives.

Shapiro has a sharp eye for the politics of technology and institutions. He writes about the politics of code in shaping the Net, the sweeping political power of interactivity, and the decline of middlemen brought about by revolutionary new software advances like the MP3 player and eBay. He also writes about the inevitable resistance to many of these changes.

Few Net writers have looked at the politics of coding, and few non-programmers have ever thought about it. Shapiro writes that just as the Net's growing rapidly, it's form can also be changed very quickly. "That's because although the Net depends on physical hardware - networks of computers and wires - it is defined mostly by code."

And most Net users can't write code, have never seen it, and know nothing about it.

So control of code, he points out, may become a powerful political power. Easily altered with a few keystrokes, code may be at the heart of political power struggles in the digital age.

In "Where Do You Want to Go Today? Microsoft and the Illusion of Control" - Shapiro looks at Gates, Inc. It's a dispassionate, revealing look at a particular corporate culture that is so worshipped and demonized that it's become nearly impossible to think rationally about it.

In a detached, credible way, Shapiro writes about the strengths and weaknesses of the Internet's most loved, patronized and hated corporation. He writes, for example, about how Microsoft's executives have gotten themselves into a dangerous mindset that, "if they don't control everything, they'll control nothing," perhaps the first plausible explanation I've seen of the power-mad bumbling revealed in the company's ongoing legal nightmares in Washington.

Shapiro also writes about another controversial issue few people on the Net or Web want to deal with - how new blocking, filtering and other "convenience" and anti-spamming softwares (yes, much more sophisticated than Kill Files ever were, and much less motivated by self defense and protection) are changing the ground rules of free speech on the Net and the Web, allowing the dissenter's voice to be excluded effortlessly and instantly.

Shapiro is a scholar and a lawyer, and "The Control Revolution" is thorough, meticulously supported, sometimes dry but almost always thoughtful and dead-on.

We need to grasp, he argues, that living well in the digital age means more than just having complete dominion over life's decisions. Personal freedom requires also knowing when to relinquish authority, either to chance or to the wisdom of others. And that for the sake of democracy, the people using the Net and the Web need to consider a new kind of social and political compact - not a starry-eyed declaration of cyber-independence, but a realistic compromise between personal liberty and communal obligation.

Shapiro stumbles a bit here. His call for this kind of dialogue is stirring and sensible, but it reads more like an op-ed piece than a realistic solution to the enormous social and political challenges presented by the growth of the Network, and the particular challenges to open discussion of common issues. His appeal for a moderate rationality is too detached from reality. The kind of discussion he argues for - the kind necessary for new social compacts -- isn't even remotely likely to occur on the chaotic, free and ferociously individualistic Net or the Web, outside of a few carefully-screen websites, mailing lists or weblogs.

People who write or post publicly on the Web - even those who love it - despair of ever having rational, non-hostile public discussions. Few would believe any sort of broad, rational, civil discussion about politics or society is likely in the near future. Online discussions are quarrelsome, frequently vicious, disjointed and diverse - in a way, that's sort of the point.

They are much freer and inherently less organized and directed than the kind of forum Shapiro seems to want, and rarely, if ever, provide any sort of concensus or coherent thread on issues.

Still, if Shapiro can't solve the Net's civic problems, he's sure grasped the import of the biggest single idea emerging from the online world: the movement of power, influence and freedom away from institutions and companies and towards individuals.

This notion of individual liberty is an old, profoundly powerful idea, dating back to the Enlightenment and the American and French Revolutions. But the early revolutionaries were just looking to beat back monarchies. They never imagined individual people would ever have the power the Net and the Web is giving them over culture, business and information and, almost inevitably, over politics.

Shapiro has this brilliantly nailed this notion down, rising above Luddite alarms, Utopian digital fantasies, programming jargon and the media hype now surrounding computing.

It's hard to imagine a more timely book about the real significance of the Internet - how it's continuing (maybe beginning) the long and bitterly difficult process of putting individuals in charge of their world.