The People Vs Tech: How the internet is killing democracy (and how we save it)

They're taking over our lives one gadget at a time and it will soon be too late to stop them. They can invisibly influence elections, keep their tax off-shore, monopolise vital services in your city while refusing workers rights, become your only source of news and information while controlling data and intelligence that dwarfs the capabilities of your government... In the rush for individual freedom and slimmer phones, we have imperilled democracy. Digital technology is piece by piece dismantling our democracy. It is destroying essential civic institutions like independent media, fuelling rage and division creating unparalleled powerful monopolies, turbo-charging inequality, and creating tech that law-makers don't understand and can't regulate. With the onset of artificial intelligence, this is all about to get far worse. Unless we change course, we have 20 years to save democracy from a fast-emerging techno-dystopia. Written by the presenter of BBC's The Secrets of Silicon Valley and bestselling author of The Dark Net, Jamie Bartlett has created a sharp, bold polemic, examining how digital technology as it currently exists is incompatible with our democracy: and how politics needs to be reformed before it's too late. Praise for Dark Net`A hell of an achievement. Buy it and read it' - Times Praise for BBC's The Secrets of Silicon Valley'A sobering look at how tech is going to change society quickly and dramatically' - Guardian