dont_be_evil

DON'T BE EVIL The Case Against Big Tech by Rana Foroohar

2019 (2020) Creamy Penguin. Paperback

This is a very important book arguing for regulation of Big Tech. In
particular the monopolistic giants called FAANG: Facebook, Apple,
Amazon, Netflix and Google.

I'm proud that I own a lot of the major books cited by Rana Foroohar
and I'll read some of them in the next sic months. Any three of these
should suffice:

Ferguson, Niall: The Square and the Tower. 2018
Levy, Steven: In the Plex: How Google thinks... 2011
McNamee, Roger: Zucked: Waking up to the Facebook Catastrophe. 2019
Wu, Tim: The Attention Merchangs. 2016
Zuboff, Shoshanna: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. 2019

Two I'd already read are Jaron Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget and Who
Owns the Future? I have a lot of these books which I call I.T Policy
books.

Big Tech is making society more polarized (Foroohar uses the word
"bifurcated" repeatedly). Trust in democracy and a fair society is
declining as the traditional media is replaced by Social Media and
advertising money goes to the FAANGs who exploit our data with opaque
algorithns.

The US FAANGs show rampant capitalism without proper controls on
their behaviour. They buy up start-up competitors and real innovation
is stifled. China has an oppressive government and is in a trade war
with the United States. A happy middle ground appears to be Europe;
where tech is properly controlled and many of the FAANGs have lost
court cases and been forced to curtail their behaviour.

Some closing words on the book itself. It's a "creamy Penguin"
paperback, the fourth of this fantastic series that I've finished.
The others are

Blitzed
China's War with Japan
Flash Boys

There's a few books I've read in other editions and re-bought as
creamy Penguins

You are Not a Gadget
Who Owns the Future?
Dial M for Murdoch

I've recently catalogued (and assembled) my Creamy Penguins and I have
roughly 120 of them! At least two years worth of non-fiction
reading. My next Creamy Penguin will be the Russia Anxiety.

                                       24th March 2023.

My book reviews are at https://github.com/stucooper/booksiveread