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World Without Mind

the Existential Threat of Big Tech
May 20, 2018Indoorcamping rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
You know how you check out a book because the writer is someone who writes incredibly? And you read everything he's ever written in The Atlantic, for example? And you hear him on your book podcasts hawking his newest book and you are so excited to learn even more? That's what I did here. Because it's not a quick memoir like I usually read in a day or two, I figured I'd just read the last chapter and maybe one or two others, simply to get the meat of his argument being that there's a lot of meat here and I'm not really THAT interested in digesting it. In fact, to expand the metaphor - you know where this is going - I'm almost vegan in my interest in existential threats particularly having to do with Big Tech. I'm nobody and nobody is calling me up asking me for my opinion on how to solve these problems, and in fact nobody even asks me in real life anything about this stuff because we're all kind of stupid when it comes to big problems with the ethics of big tech. And you know where this is going, too, right? I read the last chapter first, in the first half hour of a five hour flight. Okay, I thought, that went quickly and I wasn't intimidated or bored or overwhelmed. So I read the introduction and the first chapter. Then the next and the next. Before the flight was over, I devoured the whole thing, meat and all. How did that happen? I'm not the one to make an articulate argument about overarching ethical lapses in big tech and how they've shattered democracy, even after digesting all of it. I did have an interesting conversation with my son-in-law about these ideas, so that's something. But now I just feel stupid again, helpless, powerless, and kind of aware in a way I wasn't before. Listening to politicians talk about Facebook and privacy is a lot easier, that's for sure, and they sound even more ignorant than before I read this book. Some of them, anyway. This is the best book I've read on this subject, evidenced by my reading it in one sitting all the way through, and I feel smarter and more aware. Franklin Foer is my favorite Foer. I'll read anything he writes. And maybe twice.