World Without Mind
The existential threat of big tech.
These are the initial reviews of Franklin Foer’s book, World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech:
- World Without Mind is an argument in the spirit of those brave democracy protestors who stand alone before tanks. Franklin Foer asks us to unplug and think. He asks us to recognize and challenge Silicon Valley’s monopoly power. His book is a vital response to digital utopianism at a time when we desperately need new ethics for social media. Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars and Private Empire
- A provocative, enlightening, and above all, important book that is asking the most important question of our times. It is nothing less than an examination of the future of humanity and what we like to call ˜free will.” It is also a good read. Foer writes with an engaging vibrancy that makes the book a page-turner. Tim Wu, author of The Attention Merchants The Master Switch
- As the dust settles from the great tech upheavals of the early 21st century, it turns out that the titans of Silicon Valley have not ushered us into a utopia of peace and freedom. Instead, as Foer so convincingly shows, by monopolizing the means of distribution, they have systematically demonetized and degraded the written word. World without Mind makes a passionate, deeply informed case for the need to take back culture knowledge, information, ideas from the Facebooks and Amazons. Its message could not be more timely. William Deresiewicz, New York Times bestselling author of Excellent Sheep and A Jane Austen Education
- Franklin Foer’s World Without Mind is a fascinating biography of the biggest players in big tech a handful of humans that, through their decisions, govern the lives of seven billion tech consumers. Foer shows that these decisions are robbing us of our humanity, our values, and our ability to grapple with complexity. World Without Mind is an important and urgent book that should be required reading for anyone who’s ever shopped on Amazon, swiped the screen on an Apple device, or scrolled through the Facebook newsfeed in short, for all of us. Adam Alter, New York Times bestselling author of Irresistible and Drunk Tank Pink
- Essential reading while we still know what reading is Foer’s terrifying analysis of the cyber state we’re in is both portrait gallery of the robber barons, the monopolists, the tax dodgers and the fantasists who own the data troughs from which we feed, and passionate plea for the retention of those values of privacy, nonconformity, contemplation, creativity and mind, which the Big Tech companies are well on their way to destroying, not out of cynicism but the deepest ignorance of what a person is and why individuality is indispensable to him. This book leaves us in no doubt: no greater threat to our humanity exists. Howard Jacobson, Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Dog’s Last Walk and The Finkler Question.
Italics are mine. To illustrate the point: there is a circular relationship between mind and matter. Where matter matters (or not). The opinion matters. You can argue anything either way.
It’s true, technology is changing everything. Also, true, a few control important decisions about what gets changed, and, probably, when. Also, true, democracy will be impacted, and-or, destroyed.
All of this proves the circularity in Nature. That Nature is intelligent. That Nature has its own ethics. That mind controls Nature (connects us to Nature). Zero and one is 50–50. Everything. No matter the numbers. So, it could be, Nature has invented us, so, we could invent technology (or, the other way around).
You have to understand technology before you can render an informed opinion on any of this. Where we get the basic zero and the ‘one.’ All that’s happening now, is, everybody is using technology to figure out whatever they need to know to survive. That’s Nature talking. Not so much technology.
Or, you can call Nature technology, if you like.
