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jessbook 's review for:
i started this book 5 months ago when i was awakening to the fact that most of my deepest personal and collective anxieties are rooted in the feedback loop of rapidly developing tech and new market forms that were systematically targeting the weaknesses of my own self concept, existing social hierarchies, and democracy as a whole. i became somewhat obsessive about it as i was seeing the effects of this phenomenon everywhere but it wasn’t something that had ever been expressly named, analyzed, and critiqued on a personal and societal scale. this book was a perfect foundational text on the topic. its dense and definitely repetitive (-.5 stars) but explains the issues that have arisen from behavioral futures markets with a breadth i found extremely satisfying and with a healthy sense of urgency. zuboffs writing is pragmatic while maintaining an enjoyable reading experience with personal anecdotes and analogies that are beautifully constructed and arresting. i am very invested in the questions she poses but it still took me ages to get through. its sort of exhausting and easy to get cynical about but ultimately hopeful. naming a problem is the first step in addressing it. so if you really want to get into the history and theory and political implications of the tech companies that are directing our online experience and fundamentally tuning our experience of reality i recommend this book. but there are probably less academically intensive ways to go about it. (see how to do nothing: resisting the attention economy by jenny odell & amusing ourselves to death by neil postman)