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For all their famed disruption of the economy, Big Tech's secret sauce turns out to be Capitalism's standard issue blend of exploitation and corporate maleficence.
About the author
Rob Larson is Professor of Economics at Tacoma Community College and author of Bleakonomics and Capitalism vs. Freedom from Zero Books. He writes for a variety of venues including Jacobin, In These Times, Current Affairs and Dollars & Sense.
Summary
For all their famed disruption of the economy, Big Tech's secret sauce turns out to be Capitalism's standard issue blend of exploitation and corporate maleficence.
Foreword
Galleys availablePitch interviews, reviews and excerpts to: Current Affairs, Belt Magazine, Jacobin, The Atlantic, The Guardian, New Politics, The Progressive, Red Pepper, International Socialist ReviewPromote on social media
Additional text
"Larson argues that what we need here is the mass strike: widespread strike action, on an international scale, for social good. The tech infrastructure and services which have become central to our lives need to be brought under democratic control, by their workers and their users. Larson recognises that this will not be an easy fight, but there are immediate demands we can make which would be both beneficial in themselves and which would energise activists to fight for the more transformative changes we need." —Counterfire
"Larson demonstrates, devastatingly, that the supposedly libertarian and benevolent owners of Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook — "the five biggest corporations in the world by market value," he notes — used predatory practices to solidify their positions, running roughshod over competitors and their own employees alike....Bit Tyrants is potentially as horrifying as any fiction." —Winnipeg Free Press
"Highly informed, lively and readable, this is a badly needed study of the giant high tech corporations that increasingly dominate the means of work and social interaction, amass and scrutinize the details of our lives, seek to shape attitudes and behavior, and like the great virtual monopolies of the past both rely on state power and heavily influence it. Beyond exposing the nature of this awesome and threatening system, Larson goes on to outline how it can, and should, be brought under popular control. A most valuable contribution to understanding and guide to action." —Noam Chomsky
"Learning to decode Big Tech is necessary, a basic act of citizenship in a world awash in technology. Reading Bit Tyrants is an important step in acquiring this skill." —Counter Currents
"Today's tech giants control technologies that have suffused our lives, and they have generated a self-glorifying mythology and hype to match. Rob Larson's Bit Tyrants helps puncture this ideological reality-distortion field, providing a guide to monopolistic giants like Amazon and Google, as they transform labor, politics, war and more. He does all this with a sarcastic wit that will bring a smile to anyone who has cursed the malign influence of these companies and their plutocratic rulers on 21st Century life...." —Peter Frase, author of Four Futures
