Against Platforms: Surviving Digital Utopia (Activist Citizens Library)

A bold and imaginative critique of the hidden costs of digital life – and a manifesto for a better future . . .

At the turn of the millennium, digital technologies seemed to have immense promise for transforming our society. With these powerful new tools, the thinking went, we would be free to live our best lives, connected to our communities in ways full of infinite potential.

A quarter of a century on, this form of utopianism seems like a cruel mirage. Our lives are more fragmented and pressure-filled as ever, as we race to keep up with technologies that manipulate, command, and drain us at every turn. 

So what happened? In Against Platforms, technologist and creator Mike Pepi lays out an explanation of what went wrong – and a manifesto for putting it right.

The key, says Pepi, is that we have been taught that digital technologies are neutral tools, transparent, easily understood, and here to serve us. The reality, Pepi says, is that they are laden with assumptions and collateral consequences – ideology, in other words. And it is this hidden ideology that must be dismantled if we are to harness technology for the fullest expression of our humanity.

Mike Pepi is a technologist and author who has written widely about the intersection between culture and the Internet. An art critic and theorist, he self-identifies as part of the “tech left” – digital natives who want to reshape technology as a force for progressive good. His writing has been published in Spike, Frieze, e-flux, and other venues.