Meganets: How Digital Forces Beyond Our Control Commandeer Our Daily Lives and Inner Realities
Language: English
Published by PublicAffairs, 2023
- Hardcover
- New
Seller: Brook Bookstore On Demand, Napoli, NA, ItalyBrook Bookstore On Demand
AbeBooks seller since October 11, 2022
Condition: New
US$ 28.21
Quantity: 5 available
Add to basketSeller Inventory # Q81RA3IFIK
- Title
- Meganets: How Digital Forces Beyond Our Control Commandeer Our Daily Lives and Inner Realities
- Author
- Auerbach, David B.
- Publisher
- PublicAffairs
- Publication year
- 2023
- Condition
- new
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 1541774442
- ISBN 13
- 9781541774445
- Item weight
- 0.57 kilograms
David Auerbach’s exploration of the phenomenon he has identified as the meganet begins with a simple, startling revelation: There is no hand on the tiller of some of the largest global digital forces that influence our daily lives: from corporate sites such as Facebook, Amazon, Google, YouTube, Instagram, and Reddit to the burgeoning metaverse encompassing cryptocurrencies and online gaming to government systems such as China’s Social Credit System and India’s Aadhaar.
As we increasingly integrate our society, culture and politics within a hyper-networked fabric, Auerbach explains how the interactions of billions of people with unfathomably large online networks have produced a new sort of beast: ever-changing systems that operate beyond the control of the individuals, companies, and governments that created them.
Meganets, Auerbach explains, have a life of their own, actively resisting attempts to control them as they accumulate data and produce spontaneous, unexpected social groups and uprisings that could not have even existed twenty years ago. And they constantly modify themselves in response to user behavior, resulting in collectively authored algorithms none of us intend or control. These enormous invisible organisms exerting great force on our lives are the new minds of the world, increasingly commandeering our daily lives and inner realities.
Auerbach’s analysis of these gargantuan opaque digital forces yield important insights such as:
- The conventional wisdom that the Googles and Facebook of this world are tightly run algorithmic entities is a myth. No one is really in control.
- The efforts at reform - to get lies and misinformation off meganets - run into a brick wall because the companies and executives who run them are trapped by the persistent, evolving, and opaque systems they have created.
- Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are uncontrollable and their embrace by elite financial institutions threatens the entire economy
- We are asking the wrong questions in assuming that if only the Facebooks of this world could be better regulated or broken up that they would be better, more ethical citizens.
- Why questions such as making algorithms fair and bias-free and whether AI can be a tool for good or evil are wrong and misinformed
Auerbach then comes full circle, showing that while we cannot ultimately control meganets we can tame them through the counterintuitive measures he describes in detail.
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About the Author
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Brook Bookstore On Demand
Napoli, NA, Italy
AbeBooks seller since October 11, 2022
Shipping rates from Italy to U.S.A.
| Item | 25 to 40 business days | 60 to 60 business days |
|---|---|---|
| First item | US$ 7.84 | US$ 589.52 |
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Account dedicated to Print on Demand titles. Brook Bookstore offers a wide selection of books with a continuously updated catalog and fast shipments all over the world. We hold distribution rights with all of the publishers we promote and are in continuous search of new interesting titles to propose to our customers. We are part of Brandon Group SRL (an Italian company) and all of the orders are shipped from Europe. Depending on availability orders will be picked from our different warehouses. CONTACT US If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us sending a message to our store. We have a well prepared customer service team who will be happy to assist you. Our working hours are from Monday to Friday from 9:30 to 18:30 (CET, UTC +1) so messages received during the weekends might be responded with a slight delay but we guarantee you will get back to you as soon as possible. RETURNS If you want to return your order, please submit your request through Abebooks platform. Returns requests are managed case by case by our team and always in line with Abebooks policies: AbeBooks’ Return Policy guarantees that you can return any book for a refund within 30 days, when the return is due to an error on the bookseller’s part. When the motive of the return is not due to an error of the seller it is up to Brook Bookstore to accept the return or else after studying the case. CANCELLATION You can send a cancellation request to our customer service team while the package has not yet been shipped. After that we cannot ensure we can retrieve the parcel but we suggest you to get in touch with us in order to verify the case. INVOICE You can request the invoice to be issued together with the shipment of the order or, at the latest, in the same month of the shipment. …
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