World Without Mind

The Existential Threat of Big Tech

De: Franklin Foer

Narrado por: Marc Cashman

Franklin Foer reveals the existential threat posed by big tech, and in his brilliant polemic gives us the toolkit to fight their pervasive influence.

Over the past few decades there has been a revolution in terms of who controls knowledge and information. This rapid change has imperiled the way we think. Without pausing to consider the cost, the world has rushed to embrace the products and services of four titanic corporations. We shop with Amazon, socialize on Facebook, turn to Apple for entertainment, and rely on Google for information. These firms sell their efficiency and purport to make the world a better place, but what they have done instead is to enable an intoxicating level of daily convenience.

As these companies have expanded, marketing themselves as champions of individuality and pluralism, their algorithms have pressed us into conformity and laid waste to privacy. They have produced an unstable and narrow culture of misinformation, and put us on a path to a world without private contemplation, autonomous thought, or solitary introspection - a world without mind. In order to restore our inner lives, we must avoid being coopted by these gigantic companies, and understand the ideas that underpin their success.

Elegantly tracing the intellectual history of computer science - from Descartes and the enlightenment to Alan Turing to Stewart Brand and the hippie origins of today's Silicon Valley - Foer exposes the dark underpinnings of our most idealistic dreams for technology. The corporate ambitions of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, he argues, are trampling longstanding liberal values, especially intellectual property and privacy. This is a nascent stage in the total automation and homogenization of social, political, and intellectual life. By reclaiming our private authority over how we intellectually engage with the world, we have the power to stem the tide.

At stake is nothing less than who we are, and what we will become. There have been monopolists in the past but today's corporate giants have far more nefarious aims. They’re monopolists who want access to every facet of our identities and influence over every corner of our decision-making. Until now few have grasped the sheer scale of the threat. Foer explains not just the looming existential crisis but the imperative of resistance.

©2017 Franklin Foer (P)2017 Penguin Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017

One of the best books of the year by The New York Times, LA Times, and NPR

"But Foer’s writing is deft enough to make this a polemic in the best sense of the word, which is to say a relentless intellectual argument, executed in the tradition of George Orwell and Christopher Hitchens, which often eschews nuance in favor of wit and aggression." (Washington Post)

“Foer conjures concise, insightful psychological profiles of each mover-and-shaker, detailing how they've mixed utopianism and monopolism into an insidious whole. He also offers compelling mini-bios of everyone from Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew and the father of modern propaganda, to Stewart Brand, publisher of The Whole Earth Catalog and a massive influence on Silicon Valley.... World Without Mind is a searing take, a polemic packed with urgency and desperation that, for all its erudition and eloquence, is not afraid to roll up its sleeves and make things personal.” (NPR.org)

An Existential Crisis in the Factual World

Would you consider the audio edition of World Without Mind to be better than the print version?

I am an enormous fan of those who have the guts and fortitude to stand up for what they believe in and to call out injustices. Franklin Foer does this in his book, "World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech," in such a smooth and personal way that the reader is fully engaged and entertained even as we delve into deep ethical issues of privacy, autonomy, and the destruction of intellectual property. The audiobook was beautifully narrated and very informative. I would recommend this book to anyone who feels big business has overstepped its bonds in the name of profit. Well done.

What other book might you compare World Without Mind to and why?

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What about Marc Cashman’s performance did you like?

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Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

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Things you should know

Informative book. Hopefully we are not to far down this road already. In my opinion this book tells a story of how we got here. Unfortunately we dont know how to fix it. the future is unknown and should be concerning

I appreciate the warning...

But I get the impression the author thinks if it wasn't for Facebook, we'd all be Henry David Thoreau, sitting around at Walden Pond, philosophizing. And I personally am crazy about my Kindle.

eye opening

Very worthwhile book. Maybe could've been a bit shorter and said the samething. Narrator was okay. Wake up America!

Your own bias shows through

Several statements are biased and not provable so why do I trust anything you say?

Interesting viewpoint

While I don't agree with some of the leaps taken, this book will open your eyes up to what is happening in the tech world today. Also deep dives into how a few giants have been able monopolize. Interesting and easy listen.

interesting but meandering

some of this is pretty well padded, but the core argument is fascinating and true. timely considering what's happening now with Facebook and Google data being questioned and how their platforms were used to influence the election.

5-Star Book with a 1-Star Title

5-Star Book with a 1-Star Title

There's a recent trend where we take an amazing book that everyone needs to read and give it a crazy title (e.g., Chasing the Scream, Fantasy Land, etc.) virtually guaranteeing that nobody will become intrigued enough to pick up said book. To help overcome this deficit, I have written this review to point out how insanely good this dull-titled book really is.


Pop quiz, during the last four years of the Obama administration, which American company sent the most lobbyists to the White House?

Was it some bloated weapons-system maker who just signed a sweetheart, no-bid, multi-billion dollar deal to deliver a weapons system that will come in late, over-contract, and have multiple technical glitches requiring expensive ongoing maintenance and upgrades from said company? Nope not those guys.

Was it lobbyists from some big pharma company trying to convince the president to let them make a handful of minor 5000% price increases on drugs invented 50 years ago and available for pennies on the dollar in every other country in the world? Nope, not those guys either.

The company with the most lobbyists regularly visiting the White House over the last 4 years, was a little silicon valley startup called Google.

Do I have your attention?

Here's what to do now:

Step 1: Read this book immediately. Step 2: Question everything.
Okay, maybe not everything. The weak spots in this book are mostly in the first half where the author (a famed former editor of the New Republic) rails bitterly against falling standards in his profession amid piracy and abundance. The author balances precariously here as he imagines himself stumbling upon some ancient economic law stating that an increase in supply somehow leads to an inevitable decrease in quality. No such law exists, and usually the opposite happens (i.e., if you want to find the most diamonds in the rough, it helps to start with a lot more rough). If you want more successes, you need to take more attempts, and that means you will have more misses too.

This book is really two books. The first half is a slow-burn oral history of the information age, and it completely undersells what’s about to hit you in the second half. The second half of the book is a rousing polemic that makes you realize suddenly that the pod people walk among us and you don’t even own a pair of katana blades to defend yourself. The second half of the book is a quadra-latte vascular injection into the orbicularis oculi muscles of your eyes. In other words, read it, and you shall be made to see the light.

A critical message in an era of conformism.

World Without Mind accurately describes the critical crossroads that we as a culture find ourselves between technological and informational Utopia and authoritarianism. He provides specific examples and historical parallels that frame the current problem well. I can forgive him for being a bit of a romanticist about the paper book, but the points that he makes are completely valid. Media consumption should be a private, introspective affair. We need to recognize the value of dedicated, professional journalism, authorship and criticism. There are certain things that simply cannot be commodified. The most recent election is the best example of the manipulative power of social media. Not that Russian “hacking“ should not be investigated, but I think the much larger question is whether we as a country should permit there to be a system by which any power, corporate, governmental, foreign or domestic, may influence our democracy.

You and your family need to understand this Book

This book is a must read for everyone. it highlights the issues we all must understand about the technology we have created it's insidious creap into all areas of our life and the control of our lives and society we are on cusp of loosing.