Review: World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech

A weekend non-fiction fun read as a break from heavy theological reading: Because Pastors need a break also!

Franklin Foer.  World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech. New York, NY: The Penguin Press, September 12th 2017. 272 pp.

4 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon

When people talk about the danger of Big Tech what exactly do they mean and how serious is it?  With a book that has the subtitle “The Existential Threat of Big Tech” author, journalist and newspaper editor Franklin Foer wrote this book to talk this specific issues.  Having finished reading this in early 2021 in which some of the national conversations include concerns about Big Tech and social media this book is quite relevant though it is written in 2017 and also the fact that Foer who is entrenched in the media establishment brought up the same concerns that I hear from political conservatives shows that the issues and problems with Big Tech really should transcend partisan party politics.

The book has eleven chapters and they are grouped into three sections.  Part one is on the monopolists of minds, part two is titled “World Without Mind” and Part three is “Take Back the Mind.”  Part one has six chapters, by far the largest section in the book.  These chapters shows us what the Big Techs are doing and have done and contain chapters with interesting titles such as “The Google Theory of Everything,” “Mark Zuckeberg’s War on Free Will” and “Jeff Bezos disrupts knowledge.”  Both Part one and two focuses on the problems while part three is the author reflecting of what to do about it.

I think this book is helpful for readers to get to know the lay of the land of what Big Tech is and what they are doing and legitimate concerns.  There are times I wonder how much of this is personal for the author who laments more than once of how both Google and Amazon make it hard for writers to make money and how he has been affected.  But overall we see the issues he talks about are relevant for all of us as well.

Some of the interesting things I learned from this book were things that didn’t surprised me but still it was informative of me to read about and to affirm beyond statements from articles online.  For instance there’s the standard fare of Facebook tries to see itself as a utility, quoting Mark Zuckerberg.  The book also talked about how the Big Techs can squeeze other industries even if it looks like they are “saving” them.  A good example is how the music industry loses revenue since people can have their music pirated but ITunes then comes along and act as a savior for the music industry to still make money but now at less share of the profit while Apple profits big from it.  In the same way Amazon makes books cheap so people think publishers are the ones to blame for high costs but Amazon sells it very cheap in order to get people to get their ebooks on their platform call Kindle.  Amazon can afford to make things super cheap for books since Amazon doesn’t see books as the thing in of itself that they are trying to sell but rather their CEO Bezo see books as a cheap gateway to become an everything-store.  One major thing I did learn new fom the book is how big Tech can get away with not paying taxes; that portion of the book was good and felt like it was rather too brief but readers will get a gist of the issue.

I think a criticism I have with the book is when it comes to solution.  I think government intervention as the author suggested with some of his proposals, might actually bring about more problems than it solves.  We need to be aware of how any government policy in general always have costs and possible negative repercussions be it intentional or not.  Its important to realize there’s trade-offs.  Yet it seems the author hasn’t really thought through this concern.  And he should have thought about this given how the book also talk about how Democrats and Big Tech often have a mutually helpful relationship where Big Tech donate to progressive causes financially and send their best minds to help work for Democrat’s candidates during election campaigns, where the Democrats then turn abound and pursue policies that help Big Tech interests and even appoint people from Big Tech to important government position and offices.  There’s a legitimate Big Tech industrial complex analogous to the military industrial complex and the Foreign Policy Establishment.  Sometimes the issue is the government helping these Big Tech Companies whether intentionally or unintentionally to become monopolistic or monopolistic-like as the book’s discussion about Big Tech not paying taxes indicate.  This of course put them at an advantage than mom-and-pop stores and brick and mortar stores or other businesses.  If that wasn’t enough sometimes Big Tech gets a “refund” from the government in massive amount of money for things like writing off the expense of giving their company executives stocks.  Of course some of these tax laws can’t be blamed on the companies themselves and even changing tax laws is political in nature; but it goes to show that some solutions are needed that isn’t just the ones people often reach for: more regulations on paper, more regulators and more red-tape.  But who is watching the regulators of Big Tech: Big Brother?  And can that also have serious questions of concerns as well?