Tambini’s book Digital Dominance: The Power of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple shows how these corporations have accumulated power in ways that existing regulatory and intellectual frameworks struggle to comprehend. A consensus is emerging that the power of these new digital monopolies is unprecedented, and that it has important implications for journalism, politics and society. Bartlett’s The People vs. Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (And How We Save It) asks what does that mean for democracy, our delicately balanced system of government that was created long before big data, total information and artificial intelligence? The author of The Dark Net and Radicals argues that through our unquestioning embrace of big tech, the building blocks of democracy are slowly being removed. The middle class is being eroded, sovereign authority and civil society are weakened, and we citizens are losing our critical faculties, maybe even our free will. Chaired by Matt Stadlen of LBC.
