Apr 2020

Foroohar is an award-winning journalist for the Financial Times and brings her reporting and investigative skills to document and analyse the role big tech plays in all our lives.

This book is so much more than a setting out of abstract social and economic ideas or a ruthless attack on technology in and of itself - which we see so often – it was born from an interaction the author’s young son had with one of the big tech behemoths.

She describes the shock of opening her bank statement and discovering that she had been charged nearly $1,000 on the app store for her son’s tablet, completely oblivious to the fact that the additional levels and games he had been playing were costing real money.

Once over the shock (and after forgiving her son!) her journalistic instinct took hold and she took it upon herself to find out more about the extraordinary wealth now in the hands of these companies. Wealth that does not sit in physical assets or commodities, but rather in the new “oil” of our economy – information and networks.

The book explores that financial and power imbalance and how it poses a threat to democracies, economies and ourselves. Foroohar explores how we got here, reminding us that ‘Humans are the makers of the new machines, and despite the dystopian paranoia about artificial intelligence, they are still the masters of them. With that power comes the ability and, indeed, the responsibility to select and then create the future we want from Big Tech – for ourselves, and our children’.