Keen On… Morozoved: To Save Everything, Insult Here [TCTV]

In another life, the densely accented Belorussian media theorist Yevgeny Morozov might have made an amusing subject for a Saturday Night Live skit. But, in real life, there’s nothing at all comic about Morozov. Wielding a scalpel as sharp as the most acidic SNL scriptwriter, Morozov has turned his intellect against such illustrious tech thinkers as Tim O’Reilly, Jeff Jarvis and Steven Johnson.

To be “Morozoved” is to be savaged in 16,000 word critiques that seek to destroy the reputations of Silicon Valley’s best and brightest. So why, I asked Morozov, does he indulge in these types of intellectual blitzkriegs? “The whole debate is a nonsense,” he explains, laying out the foundations of his new book To Save Everything, Click Here.

Silicon Valley, he argues, claims that it can solve big political problems like climate change or obesity. But, he says, the tech community – with its algorithms of human perfection – has no understanding of how imperfect we actually are. Indeed, Morozov uses himself as a good example of both imperfection and hypocrisy – suggesting perhaps that the next person to be Morozoved will be Morozov himself.