We need a serious critique of net activism

[Commentary] Evgeny Morozov's The Net Delusion is the first book from the Belarusian-born foreign policy writer and blogger. Morozov has built a reputation as a sharp and sometimes caustic critic of the Internet and "cyber-utopianism" and Net Delusion expands the arguments he's made elsewhere. I read my review copy with interest; I like Evgeny – the times we've met and corresponded, he's struck me as smart and committed.

At its core, there is some very smart stuff indeed in The Net Delusion. Morozov is absolutely correct when he forcefully points out that technology isn't necessarily good for freedom – that it can be used as readily to enslave, surveil, and punish as it can to evade, liberate and share.

Unfortunately, this message is buried amid a scattered, loosely argued series of attacks on a nebulous "cyber-utopian" movement, whose views are stated in the most general of terms, often in the form of quotes from CNN and other news agencies who are putatively summing up some notional cyber-utopian consensus. In his zeal to discredit this ideology (whatever it is), Morozov throws whatever he's got handy at anyone he can find who supports the idea of technology as a liberator, no matter how weak or silly his ammunition.