The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology Is Transforming Business, Politics and Society

*2021 Financial Times Best Book of the Year*

From Azeem Azhar, renowned technology analyst and host of the global tech podcast Exponential View, comes a bold exploration and call-to-arms over the widening gap between AI, automation, and big data—and our ability to deal with its effects.

We are living in the first exponential age.

High-tech innovations are created at dazzling speeds; technological forces we barely understand remake our homes and workplaces; centuries-old tenets of politics and economics are upturned by new technologies. It all points to a world that is getting faster at a dizzying pace.

Azeem Azhar, renowned technology analyst and host of the Exponential View podcast, offers a revelatory new model for understanding how technology is evolving so fast, and why it fundamentally alters the world. He roots his analysis in the idea of an exponential gap in which technological developments rapidly outpace our society's ability to catch up. Azhar shows that this divide explains many problems of our time—from political polarization to ballooning inequality to unchecked corporate power. With stunning clarity of vision, he delves into how the exponential gap is a near-inevitable consequence of the rise of AI, automation, and other exponential technologies, like renewable energy, 3D printing, and synthetic biology, which loom over the horizon.

And he offers a set of policy solutions that can prevent the growing exponential gap from fragmenting, weakening, or even destroying our societies. The result is a wholly new way to think about technology, one that will transform our understanding of the economy, politics, and the future.

Azeem Azhar is the creator of the Exponential View, a global platform for in-depth tech analysis. His weekly newsletter is read by nearly two hundred thousand people from around the world, and his chart-topping podcast has featured guests including Yuval Noah Harari, Reid Hoffman, and Tony Blair. Over the last three decades, Azhar has founded and invested in a number of successful tech companies bought by firms like Amazon and Microsoft. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council, a senior advisor at PwC, and a contributor to publications including the Financial Times, Prospect, and the MIT Technology Review. He served as the Economist’s first ever internet correspondent. He lives in London.