A review by 4harrisons
New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future by James Bridle

5.0

I don't think this book truly delivers on the promise of the title, which to me implies perhaps something with more of a sense of where we're heading (something perhaps a little more like Four Futures by Peter Frase). That said, I genuinely enjoyed this book as a wide ranging investigation of the modern world from climate change to mass surveillance. The common theme is the dominance of "computational thinking" and the impact on the construction of modern life. Theoretically, this is akin to the sort of reification theorised by Lukacs. Society as conditioned by the thinking of machines. While not perhaps explicitly Marxist, it certainly bears a number of similarities. The underlying theme is essentially that things cannot continue as they are if human society is to survive.

In short an engaging read, if more like a description of a problematic present than an ordered description of how this will deliver society into a new dark age.