Evgeny Morozov

In The You On AI Field Guide

Morozov's intellectual distinctiveness lies in his refusal of the binary that structures most technology discourse. He is neither a celebrant nor a Luddite; he is neither a technical specialist speaking to other specialists nor a humanist critic speaking from safely outside the technical domain. He engages with the specifics of the systems he analyzes while maintaining the philosophical and political-economic framework the specifics alone cannot supply.

The Belarusian origin matters. Morozov's formative experience included firsthand observation of how digital tools were deployed in post-Soviet authoritarian contexts — observations that immunized him against the liberation narratives that dominated Western technology discourse in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The Net Delusion's force derives substantially from this empirical grounding; its arguments are not philosophical objections to cyber-utopianism but documented demonstrations of its failure.

His political orientation has evolved across his career toward increasingly explicit engagement with the democratic socialist tradition. His 2015 New Left Review essay 'Socialize the Data Centres!' marked a turn toward constructive institutional proposals; his 2025 essay 'Socialism After AI' deepened this engagement with a diagnosis of how the left itself has been captured by technological determinism.

His method combines polemical force with empirical specificity. He names ideological formations — cyber-utopianism, solutionism, AGI-ism, Panglossian neoliberalism — and then demonstrates their operation through detailed engagement with specific cases. The naming is strategic: each term gives political discourse a linguistic handle on a formation that had previously operated without resistance because it had no name.

His recent work on AI has extended his framework to cognition itself, arguing that AI represents solutionism's apotheosis — the extension of the ideology into the process by which human beings determine what they think. The argument's force lies in its refusal of easy conclusions: AI tools work, the capability expansion is real, the empowerment users experience is genuine, and precisely because all of this is true, the political stakes are higher than simpler critical frameworks can register.

Origin

Morozov's intellectual formation combined post-Soviet experience with Western academic training, producing a critic equally capable of engaging technical specifics and philosophical frameworks while maintaining the political-economic lens that separates his work from both technology journalism and cultural criticism.

Key Ideas

Refusal of binaries. Morozov's work occupies a position outside the celebrant/critic binary that structures most technology discourse.

Empirical specificity. His arguments are not philosophical objections but documented demonstrations, drawing on detailed engagement with specific cases.

Naming as strategy. He gives political discourse linguistic handles on ideological formations that had previously operated without resistance.

Democratic socialist trajectory. His engagement with constructive institutional alternatives has deepened across his career, culminating in explicit dialogue with the democratic socialist tradition.