How to Fix the Future

By Andrew Keen

Keen’s previous book, The Internet Is Not the Answer, was widely praised by the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Financial Times, and Economist, among others, and chosen as a best book of the year by Kazuo Ishiguro in the New Statesman.

As consensus builds around the problems caused by the dominance of the internet in our lives and society, we need to focus on solutions to our digital predicament. Keen identifies five key strategies: competitive innovation, regulation, consumer choice, civic responsibility, and education, and grounds his narrative in history—how we tamed the worst excesses of the Industrial Revolution and how we can do the same in the wake of the Digital Revolution.

Praised by internet experts and laymen alike, Keen has 23,000 followers on Twitter and is regularly asked to moderate tech conversations at the highest level—including in St. Petersburg, Russia, with Jeff Bezos and Jack Ma of Alibaba. He is a columnist for CNN, a regular contributor for newspapers, radio and TV, and is in high demand for speaking engagements.

This is a global book based on significant travel and reporting, including in China, Russia, Africa, Germany, Eastern Europe, as well as Silicon Valley and New York City.

Keen’s first book, The Cult of the Amateur (2007), was one of the earliest digital-sceptic books and was translated into seventeen languages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Release date: Feb 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9780802189127

Andrew Keen

Andrew Keen és un controvertit periodista especialitzat en el món d'internet que ja ha publicat altres títols com Cult of the Amateur i Digital Vertigo. És director executiu del saló d'innovació de Silicon Valley FutureCast, columnista de la CNN i un dels especialistes d'internet més reconeguts del món.

Reviews for How to Fix the Future

[dilip1kumar-572329 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A significant work, suggesting ways in which societies will overcome the iron hold of the internet and new media, that have spelt the demise of traditional creative arts and led to a few internet giants taking over much of the business.

[davidwineberg · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dining with the CognoscentiTech has created at least as many problems as it has solved, and there are more on the way. Andrew Keen has sacrificed his stomach, meeting with experts in every field in restaurants around the world to discuss the ways out. This rambling tour of the world touches down where thinkers have identified potential solutions. They all have their opinions and some are acting on them. But it is totally scattered and no seismic shifts are evident. Even the universal basic income, which has support all over the world, is still stuck in the pilot project stage, despite endless proof of concept. So the fixes are not very specific.The framework for How To Fix The Future is Thomas More’s Utopia, now 500 years young. Keen keeps referring to aspects of it, showing how More’s ideas do or do not apply to our situation today, as well as how little things have changed. He is particularly enamored of Holbein’s map of Utopia, which can be viewed as human skull. Keen refers to it numerous times.Basically, there are no new solutions, just old ones coming back to life. Musicians are striking against the streaming services. Uber, Lyft, UPS and Fedex drivers want recognition as full employees, not just “independent contractors”. Schools are focusing on developing inquisitive humans (as opposed to test takers). More millennials are purchasing their music and news. Estonia and Singapore are making a lot of data public, and protected from fraud by date stamps. All over the world, small steps are appearing. But for every Redfin, paying real estate agents a living wage plus benefits, there is a Walmart, keeping employees part time, minimum wage, and relying on Obamacare for their health benefits. For every Freada Kapor Klein, there is a Martin Shkreli.Keen separates fixes into five buckets:-government or legal regulation (more accountability, and anti-trust activity)-competitive innovation (encouraging and democratizing startups against the winner-take-all)-social responsibility by citizens (relying on tech billionaires to do the right thing)-consumer choice (including trade unionization)-education (more physical activity, less screen time)Keen admits these fixes are not star-crossed. They won’t necessarily work or change the world, and they provide their own risks. But for Keen, who has been criticizing the internet for years, this is a turnabout.David Wineberg

[paul_s-289480 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The bad quality of writing is absolutely shocking. The author needs an editor - he endlessly repeats the same points and even sentences. The whole book is a single rambling incoherent rant with no structure, just the author flying around the world talking to people who actually know things. The tone oscillates randomly between incomprehensibly upbeat predictions and despondency and dire lecturing and doom prophesying. The author pontificates on technologies he knows very little about and a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. You can't solve technical problems when you don't understand the technology. Smugly using analogies from history is not going to be useful.