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A review by cattytrona
New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future by James Bridle
3.0
i found the central conceit of the dark age very evocative: information and truth does feel out of my grasp a lot of the time. it was reassuring, and then worrying again, to think that it isn’t just me, that it is in the design, the hyper object in the centre of our daily lives, whether that’s thanks to shadowy agencies, or just sheer incomprehensibility. i also thought the idea that darkness/lack of surety does allow for positivity (because what is unknown might well be good), although i’m not totally sure the book, often gloomy, earns its optimistic spin.
but it wasn’t quite what i thought it would be. it’s basically a series of examples of various lengths, which are often over explained, even if they eventually make good points, and which sometimes feel a little too anecdotal and specific to be extrapolated into anything. it cannot be overstated how often two sentences of explanation takes two (plus) paragraphs, and that means the book is very clear, but also very skimmable. it’s hard to reach big social truths or even thesis statements when so much of the writing is so entrenched in the minutiae of youtube kids vids (half a chapter!) or chess computers or weather prediction. those examples are interesting, if often not new to me (and i am a relative layperson to this discussion) but it also sort of feels like, if i wanted to know about this stuff, i would have picked up a book specifically and explicitly about it. it’s tough because i do want this kind of discussion to be rooted in real circumstances, i guess i’m just looking for a different scope or balance or something. however, there was at least one moment where i found the anecdote so interesting that i was like ‘why do i bother with fiction, i should be finding out about the world’, although now i can’t remember which one made me react that way. and the whole book is always very readable too, that’s worth mentioning.
but it wasn’t quite what i thought it would be. it’s basically a series of examples of various lengths, which are often over explained, even if they eventually make good points, and which sometimes feel a little too anecdotal and specific to be extrapolated into anything. it cannot be overstated how often two sentences of explanation takes two (plus) paragraphs, and that means the book is very clear, but also very skimmable. it’s hard to reach big social truths or even thesis statements when so much of the writing is so entrenched in the minutiae of youtube kids vids (half a chapter!) or chess computers or weather prediction. those examples are interesting, if often not new to me (and i am a relative layperson to this discussion) but it also sort of feels like, if i wanted to know about this stuff, i would have picked up a book specifically and explicitly about it. it’s tough because i do want this kind of discussion to be rooted in real circumstances, i guess i’m just looking for a different scope or balance or something. however, there was at least one moment where i found the anecdote so interesting that i was like ‘why do i bother with fiction, i should be finding out about the world’, although now i can’t remember which one made me react that way. and the whole book is always very readable too, that’s worth mentioning.