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[b:Beyond the Valley: How Innovators around the World are Overcoming Inequality and Creating the Technologies of Tomorrow|44512561|Beyond the Valley How Innovators around the World are Overcoming Inequality and Creating the Technologies of Tomorrow|Ramesh Srinivasan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1571119584l/44512561.SX50.jpg|69099077] is an important look at what’s wrong with the internet’s control by Big Tech. UCLA information studies professor [a:Ramesh Srinivasan|7988070|Ramesh Srinivasan|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png] also offers practical examples of possible remedies.

The first part of the book is all about the disasters we’ve uncovered in recent years. Remember when right-wing political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica took data generated from millions of Facebook “personality tests” to develop profiles for micro-targeted advertising. Those profiles then helped Brexit campaigners in the United Kingdom and Donald Trump in the US.

You will also get reviews of Google’s journey away from its original “don’t be evil” motto, Amazon’s bullying of vendors, union-busting activities and tax evasion, Apple’s attempts to dominate how you listen to music, and a variety of problems with artificial intelligence

Srinavasan warns that the technology companies will always choose profits over people. The history to date has not been positive.

As robots replace more workers, companies have no interest in how those replaced workers will survive. He suggests that a universal basic income (UBI) such as that proposed by 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang may mitigate the problem.

Perhaps you read about Amazon’s Rekognition facial recognition software. The ACLU of Northern California compared a database of criminal mugshots with photos of members of Congress. Srinavasan writes “For Congress as a whole the error rate was 5 percent, but for nonwhite members of Congress the error rate was 39 percent.”

Problems with technology and the internet aren’t limited to North America, of course. Repressive regimes use a variety of techniques and policies to enforce their rule. Srinavasan especially attacks China’s surveillance state and its social credit regime. The latter is the government’s policy of monitoring people’s behavior online and assigns “credit scores” to determine how well you contribute to society. Cross the government too often, or associate with people who do, and suddenly you can’t ride the bus as often.

Srinavasan explains: “A poor credit score that comes from expressing ‘bad’ speech online, smoking cigarettes, or playing too many video games could result in a range of punishments, from losing one’s freedom to travel, to public humiliation.”

Beyond the Valley isn’t all gloom and doom. The last part of the book looks to a variety of potential solutions, and alternative visions, to promote democratic control of the internet.

Among the options described:

- Building more and better community-based networks, such as Detroit’s Community Technology Project and Catalonia’s Guifi.net

- Platform cooperativism, an idea that promotes digital workers cooperative platforms

- a homegrown university-based AI research project in Uganda

- BRCK, a technology startup in Kenya aiming to create cheap boxes for easy, free internet connections.

- The Indigenous Community Telecommunications (TIC) network based in southern Mexico

Those of us who have been watching the movement for a (re)decentralized internet know that some enthusiasm for this idea comes from Libertarian circles, who hope to finance (and profit from) a decentralized web on the blockchain.

Srinavasan and journalist Adam Reese collaborated on a chapter about blockchain. They describe several projects and conclude (like me) that “We have no illusions about blockchain saving the world. All the same, these networks’ decentralized architectures make them potentially valuable tools for building grassroots solutions that support the needs of ordinary users. … we’ll keep our eyes open for emerging voices and continue to listen to those who talk past the hype.”

As with any academic work, Beyond the Valley is extensively documented with books, articles (both journalistic and scholarly), and web links (though I wish he had included more links to the projects and organizations he’s covered). Yet it is easy enough to read for most people.

Srinavasan doesn’t offer any panaceas, but some hopes for the future. . If you have any curiosity about how to solve the problems and inadequacies of the internet, it’s worth reading. I expect to be mining that bibliography for a while.

In 1984, [a:Rashid Khalidi|40811|Rashid Khalidi|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1363879765p2/40811.jpg] was part of a group of respected Palestinian academics that tried to persuade Yasser Arafat that the Palestinian movement “needed to take American public opinion into account, and devote to it sufficient resources and energy, but to no avail.” (110-21)

If this book is any measure of Khalidi’s ability to address an American audience and get them to understand the history of Palestine and its people, Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization made a grave mistake.

[b:The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017|41812831|The Hundred Years' War on Palestine A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017|Rashid Khalidi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1556345491l/41812831.SY75.jpg|65247140] is a powerful retelling of the last century in the Middle East.

One of the central themes of Zionist justification of their right to set up a Jewish state in the Holy Land is that there is no such thing as “the Palestinian people.” They described the land they wished to claim in the late 19th century as “a land without a people for a people without land.” In practical terms, this was never true. Khalidi notes that while Palestinians are frequently abandoned and marginalized, they usually made themselves heard.

You owe it to yourself to read this book if your understanding of the conflict in the Middle East is limited to the conventional narrative of this conflict: Where brave little Israel builds a democratic beachhead in the desert, but is only beset by constant attack by Arabs and Iranians. Where the only people calling themselves “Palestinians” are terrorists planting bombs or firing rockets against peaceful civilians. Where so-called Palestinians cannot be “partners for peace,” but autocratic monarchs can.

Really useful book to expose the mythology that corporations are the best friends of US education--and that teachers are education's worst enemy.

First rate economic history of the United States over the past 100+ years. You will learn how today's economy is comparable to the 1920s,and gain a better understanding of John Maynard Keynes's ideas than you thought you knew. Pretty easy to read for non-economists too.