Audio only
System Error
Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can RebootBy Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami, Jeremy M. WeinsteinNarrated by Kaleo GriffithLength11h 28m
About this audiobook
“Read this if you want to understand how to shape our technological future and reinvigorate democracy along the way.”—Reed Hastings, cofounder and CEO of Netflix
"A triumph: an analysis of the critical challenges facing our digital society that is as accessible as it is sophisticated." — Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of New America
A forward-thinking manifesto from three Stanford professors—experts who have worked at ground zero of the tech revolution for decades—that reveals how big tech’s obsession with optimization and efficiency has sacrificed fundamental human values and outlines steps we can take to change course, renew our democracy, and save ourselves.
In no more than the blink of an eye, a naïve optimism about technology’s liberating potential has given way to a dystopian obsession with biased algorithms, surveillance capitalism, and job-displacing robots. Yet too few of us see any alternative to accepting the onward march of technology. We have simply accepted a technological future designed for us by technologists, the venture capitalists who fund them, and the politicians who give them free rein.
It doesn’t need to be this way.
System Error exposes the root of our current predicament: how big tech’s relentless focus on optimization is driving a future that reinforces discrimination, erodes privacy, displaces workers, and pollutes the information we get. This optimization mindset substitutes what companies care about for the values that we as a democratic society might choose to prioritize. Well-intentioned optimizers fail to measure all that is meaningful and, when their creative disruptions achieve great scale, they impose their values upon the rest of us.
Armed with an understanding of how technologists think and exercise their power, three Stanford professors—a philosopher working at the intersection of tech and ethics, a political scientist who served under Obama, and the director of the undergraduate Computer Science program at Stanford (also an early Google engineer)—reveal how we can hold that power to account.
Troubled by the values that permeate the university’s student body and its culture, they worked together to chart a new path forward, creating a popular course to transform how tomorrow’s technologists approach their profession. Now, as the dominance of big tech becomes an explosive societal conundrum, they share their provocative insights and concrete solutions to help everyone understand what is happening, what is at stake, and what we can do to control technology instead of letting it control us.
Audiobook details
Rating★★★★ 4.0 (1.6K)
Includes Goodreads, Amazon, StoryGraph, LibraryThing
GenreBusiness and Economics, Technology, Politics and Government
Length11 hrs 28 mins
Narrated byKaleo Griffith
FormatAudiobook
Publish dateSep 7, 2021
LanguageEnglish
The Business of StoriesSusan Payton3h 58m4.9 (111)$20 · $0.00
A Bridge Not Too FarDeepak Ohri4h 55m4.8 (179)$15
AretéBrian Johnson19h 57m4.7 (2.2K)$35
Testtrainer Logisches DenkenGRETA CRENSHAW10h 11m4.8 (121)$12.50 · $0.00
Level UpRob Dial7h 42m4.6 (3.3K)$26 · $0.00
Hal Moore on LeadershipHarold G. Moore, Mike Guardia5h 6m4.6 (2.7K)$17
Basic Economics, Fifth EditionThomas Sowell28h 6m4.5 (30.1K)$40
The Goals ProgramZig Ziglar4h 34m4.6 (2.3K)$20
The Stocks & ETF Compass: A Guide to Wealth, High Standard of Living, and Secure Retirement through Intelligent Investment in the Stock Market and Passive Income – Including Starter GuideJens Hattermann4h 9m4.9 (41)$20 · $0.00
Eat It!Jordan Syatt, Michael Vacanti4h 40m4.6 (1.5K)$20 · $0.00
Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II (Annotated)Henry George19h 21m4.6 (574)$0.99 · $0.00
Not Everything Counts but Everything Matters: The powerful and inspirational new book about leadership and achieving success from the visionary multi-premiership winning Panthers coachIvan Cleary6h 1m4.6 (680)$24 · $0.00
Leads MachineFrancis Rodino6h 30m4.9 (39)$27 · $0.00
BuildTony Fadell11h 5m4.5 (14.3K)$8 · $0.00
The Joys Of CompoundingGautam Baid17h 34m4.5 (2.5K)$18 · $0.00
The Entrepreneur Roller CoasterDarren Hardy7h 8m4.5 (5.2K)$17
Poor Charlie’s AlmanackGrover Gardener, Charles T. Munger13h 9m4.5 (24.7K)$18 · $0.00
The Ambuja StoryNarotam Sekhsaria13h 59m4.5 (830)$33 · $0.00
Military Culture ShiftCorie Weathers13h 13m4.7 (120)$25 · $0.00
The Secret Door to SuccessFlorence Scovel Shinn2h 25m4.5 (2.1K)$1.20 · $0.00
Frosty: The incredible true story of the boy from Doonside who became a Bathurst kingMark Winterbottom8h 9m4.8 (50)$26 · $0.00
Cadillac Desert, Revised and Updated EditionMarc Reisner27h 56m4.4 (13.6K)$30
The Honey BusMeredith May9h 31m4.4 (16.6K)$25 · $0.00
Operation PedestalMax Hastings12h 29m4.4 (5.2K)$29 · $0.00
When the Heavens Went on SaleAshlee Vance18h 20m4.4 (3K)$40 · $0.00
Hands of TimeRebecca Struthers8h 8m4.4 (1.3K)$26 · $0.00
Everybody Has a Podcast (Except You)Justin McElroy, Travis McElroy, Griffin McElroy5h 9m4.3 (2.3K)$24 · $0.00
Never Lost AgainBill Kilday10h 1m4.4 (805)$29 · $0.00
How the Internet HappenedBrian McCullough13h 28m4.3 (2.7K)$23 · $0.00
Collected Writings of Nikola TeslaNikola Tesla, Thomas Commerford Martin21h 50m4.3 (1.7K)$1 · $0.00
Just AspireAjai Chowdhry9h 13m4.4 (260)$29 · $0.00
The Little Book of AliensAdam Frank8h 20m4.3 (1.3K)$26 · $0.00
The inventions, researches and writings of Nikola Tesla (Annotated)Thomas Commerford Martin16h 59m4.3 (1.3K)$2 · $0.00
KargilV.P. Malik15h 18m4.3 (2K)$24 · $0.00
Experiments with Alternating CurrentsNikola Tesla9h 6m4.3 (874)$1 · $0.00
Fire on the HorizonTom Shroder, John Konrad8h 23m4.3 (858)$26 · $0.00
The Smell of Kerosene (Annotated)National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Donald L. Mallick, Peter W. Merlin11h 32m4.3 (523)$2 · $0.00
The Boy Who Harnessed the WindWilliam Kamkwamba, Bryan Mealer10h 5m4.2 (78.9K)$29 · $0.00
Mars Rover CuriosityRob Manning, William L. Simon7h 43m4.3 (1.7K)$20
Across the Airless WildsEarl Swift10h 8m4.3 (1.3K)$29 · $0.00
Defying JihadEsther Ahmad8h 50m4.7 (4.8K)$20
Black AF HistoryMichael Harriot15h 43m4.7 (14.6K)$33 · $0.00
The Gulag Archipelago Volume 3Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn21h 56m4.7 (8.9K)$46 · $0.00
MotherlandJulia Ioffe17h 52m4.7 (2.5K)$40 · $0.00
HostageEli Sharabi5h 25m4.6 (10.8K)$24 · $0.00
Pardon of Innocencethe Author, Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn (Ret.)6h 23m4.8 (190)$23
KrantikariSanjeev Sanyal11h 44m4.6 (1.3K)$16 · $0.00
Unbroken Bonds of BattleJohnny Joey Jones8h 31m4.6 (2.6K)$8 · $0.00
On Democracies and Death CultsDouglas Murray10h 38m4.6 (6.5K)$29 · $0.00
Legally YoursManasi Chaudhari8h 52m4.7 (223)$29 · $0.00
Balcony Over Jerusalem: A Middle East Memoir - Israel, Palestine and BeyondJohn Lyons12h 37m4.6 (1.4K)$33 · $0.00
RiggedMollie Hemingway12h 48m4.6 (4.2K)$23 · $0.00
The Thomas Sowell ReaderThomas Sowell14h 51m4.6 (2.3K)$25
SledgehammerDavid Friedman8h 21m4.7 (589)$26 · $0.00
So You Want to Talk about RaceIjeoma Oluo7h 41m4.6 (146.2K)$17
Citizenship in a Republic (Annotated)Theodore Roosevelt2h 44m4.6 (1.4K)$2 · $0.00
No EscapeNury Turkel9h 30m4.6 (809)$28 · $0.00
In Defense of the Second AmendmentLarry Correia6h 50m4.6 (866)$17
Always FaithfulThomas Schueman, Zainullah Zaki12h 12m4.6 (977)$29 · $0.00
UnthinkableJamie Raskin15h 8m4.5 (9.3K)$8 · $0.00
You may also like
You Will Own NothingCarol Roth11h 1m4.1 (2.4K)$29 · $0.00
How the World Ran Out of EverythingPeter S. Goodman12h 18m4.2 (1.5K)$29 · $0.00
PostcapitalismPaul Mason13h 41m3.8 (5.3K)$23 · $0.00
The AI ConEmily M. Bender, Alex Hanna7h 51m3.7 (1.7K)$26 · $0.00
The Exponential AgeAzeem Azhar9h 44m4.0 (1.6K)$20 · $0.00
The Last BeekeeperPablo Cartaya7h 16m4.0 (1.3K)$24 · $0.00
Ignorance Is Strengthvarious authors, John Joseph Adams, Hugh Howey, Christie Yant11h 32m4.2 (301)$20
The Hour of the PredatorGiuliano da Empoli3h 9m4.2 (5.6K)$5 · $0.00
The End of OwnershipAaron Perzanowski, Jason Schultz10h 2m4.2 (288)$20
TargetedBrittany Kaiser13h 3m4.0 (1.4K)$33 · $0.00
The FutureNaomi Alderman13h 3m4.0 (26.7K)$33 · $0.00
We Have Been HarmonizedKai Strittmatter10h 29m4.3 (4.3K)$29 · $0.00
The Last Economy: A Guide to the Age of Intelligent EconomicsEmad Mostaque3h 54m4.3 (344)Free
The Immortal King RaoVauhini Vara12h 43m3.7 (6.1K)$33 · $0.00
Think Like a HumanDavid Weitzner8h 36m4.1 (16)$26 · $0.00
Agenda 2030Dawid Snowden27m$4 · $0.00
Beyond the ValleyRamesh Srinivasan12h 34m4.0 (186)$23 · $0.00
Graphic Films Collection - Metropolis – act 3G.B. Royer6m$11 · $0.00
CloudmoneyBrett Scott8h 51m3.9 (732)$29 · $0.00
Code RedWynton Hall8h 21m4.3 (72)$24 · $0.00