Trapped in the Net

Despite a title and a cover designed to grab the demographic who reads Wired magazine, this book is one of the sanest, most well-reasoned and well-researched books on the sociology of computing that I have ever read. To my mind, the book easily places Rochlin among the ranks of Langdon Winner and Jacques Ellul. While 'gurus' like Esther Dyson and Sherry Turkle continue to churn out fluff books about the way computing is 'revolutionizing' our lives, Rochlin returns to a quaint little practice some people used to call 'research'. As a computer systems engineer, I have been in the industry long enough to see the casual contempt that most technologists have for the user communities they serve, and I appreciate Rochlin's nuanced efforts to give historical context to these attitudes. Ours is an industry full of pampered whiners who inherited an intolerance for accountability and self-scrutiny from the think-tank darlings of the 50s and 60s, as Rochlin shows. This critique will not be a welcome one for many, and Rochlin will be accused of Luddism. But such a claim laid against a man who was a physicist for a decade is ridiculous. Rochlin not only exposes the irresponsibility of attitudes in the developer community, but also provides a welcome tonic to the hyperbole and snake-oil claims made about digital productivity gains and intelligent machines. If you are a responsible technologist and not simply another zealot who prays to the false totems of AI and the 'digital revolution', you will breathe a sigh of relief that finally SOMEONE wrote this book.

Although the title causes one to think of certain films involving certain speedy actresses, the subtitle, "The Unanticipated Consequences of Computerization," sets a tone more like that of the book itself.Working from the perspectives of both the natural and social sciences, Rochlin proposes the interesting idea that our great reliance upon computers and computerized artifacts has significant consequences outside of equipment failure or the deskilling of labor.Although the organization of the book is somewhat poor, I consider the text a must for anyone interested in the overall relationship between technology and human life