Book Review: The People vs Tech, by Jamie Bartlett

I thought this was a good book highlighting the dangers of current and future digital technology (e.g. social media applications, the internet of things) and the incredible power that makers of these technologies are beginning to wield. From social media applications designed to cause addiction to targeted advertising designed to sway our votes, it's difficult not to feel a tinge of worry as you read. The author has done a good job of surveying the books and articles in this space and pooling them together. My only problem with the book was that I felt that the author was shoehorning the word "democracy" into the book as many times as possible and, most probably, simply because he had set out to write a book on "how the internet is killing democracy". There were a few places where I agreed with the author and felt that the danger which he was highlighting applied to "democracy" (e.g. election campaigns using data from our social media accounts to sway our votes). However, in other places I thought it was just a danger to governance in general (e.g. jobs being lost to AI) and not specific to democracy.