About this item
Highlights
- 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.
- 214 Pages
- Political Science, Political Economy
Description
About the Book
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.
Book Synopsis
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.
Review Quotes
"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
"From a critical and well-documented perspective, Larson takes us through the roots of the "Monopoly Quintet" (Microsoft, Google [Al phabet], Facebook [Meta], Amazon, and Apple) in order to challenge the "popular tech fairy tale" based on the supposed cunning of its prominent figures-always white and male-showing that through network effect mechanisms, this monopolistic group has generated tightly chained control over different areas of the communications and information technology industries." -Monthly Review
"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
"Rob Larson reveals the interwoven interests that today connect the Bit Tech monopolies with the U.S. political and military apparatus, which extends throughout the world through force and coercion."
-Mateo Crossa, Monthly Review
"Larson's book makes an effective case that economic exploitation under capitalism has derailed the achievement of full human freedom for far too long."
-Chris Green, ZNetwork
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.