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There are few tidbits of knowledge in here, if you can filter out the blatant false claims, internal inconsistencies, and stunning political bias.

When the author actually covers internet filtering, there are some interesting tidbits of information, but the reader needs to filter which passages are fact and which passages are the author's opinions. For example, when describing Google's ranking algorithm, the author claims that the algorithm is so large and complex (hundreds of thousands of lines of code), that not even Google's engineers understand how it ranks your personalized searches. Yet, in the book's conclusion, when arguing for public disclosure of Google's algorithm for the sake of guarding against evil (while mocking the intellectual property value of the algorithm), the author makes the stunning claim that the public will 'intuitively' understand page ranks. So, when the algorithm is private, it's incomprehensible even by professionals, but when disclosed to the public, it becomes intuitively obvious!

Given the author's liberal peppering of his political agenda throughout the book, i understand his point of view. Regrettably, the incessant political undertones tremendously detract from the subject matter. Some examples include the claim that inanimate objects are the root causes of evil, not the misuse of those objects by humans -- Google's algorithm can't harm anyone by itself, rather the misuse of the algorithm by humans may cause harm. Applying the author's twisted political logic to computer viruses and malware would put the blame for damage on the virus code rather than the malcontents who wrote and distributed the virus code.

The author's