A review by jedwardsusc
New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future by James Bridle

4.0

The title is an homage to H. P. Lovecraft. That tells you most of what you need to know going in about the pessimism level in this book. Bridle argues that more information does not and cannot fix our problems. Instead, the quest for more and faster access to information has created a digital fog (cloud) so dense that even our fanciest computer algorithms (the ones that built the cloud) cannot see beyond it. The result is not a science fiction thriller of smart computers becoming self aware and seizing control but a profoundly more banal horror story of big data machines mindlessly magnifying and exploiting our worst human tendencies.