Disappointing. First of all, Davidow can’t decide whether he means “internet” or “modern communication technologies.” Many of the things he describes as generating dangerous connections and thus dependencies on complex systems that can easily and quickly be brought down by small mistakes can equally be done by private systems, and in some cases were done by such systems linking only, for example, banks. Second, Davidow chooses to place blame at weird points: the internet is responsible for the dot-com crash not because dot-coms were internet companies, but because it allowed the rise of day traders, who invested even when the smart money had moved on. This is, to put it mildly, somewhat misleading about the role of fraud and insider self-dealing in handing out gifts to the well-connected; it’s true that there needed to be some suckers left to take the hit when reality emerged, but they’re not the ones I hold responsible (or think regulation should focus on) any more than the people who took out subprime loans are the “cause” of the current economic collapse. Davidow is also disappointingly short on solutions, which isn’t surprising if he hasn’t identified key causes. ( )