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A Trust Buster for the New ‘Knowledge Monopoly’

By  |  October 2, 2017

Posted by New York Times

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    A Trust Buster for the New ‘Knowledge Monopoly’

    By John Herrmanoct

    WORLD WITHOUT MIND
    The Existential Threat of Big Tech
    By Franklin Foer

    The technology critic is typically a captive figure, beholden either to a sorrowful past, a panicked present or an arrogant future. In his proudest moments, he resembles something like a theorist of transformation, decline and creation. In his lowest, he is more like a speaking canary, prone to prophecy, a game with losing odds. His attempts at optimism are framed as counterintuitive, faring little better, in predictive terms, than his lapses into pessimism. He teeters hazardously between implicating his audience and merely giving their anxieties a name. He — and it is almost always a he — is the critical equivalent of an unreliable narrator, unable to write about technology without also writing about himself. Occasionally, he is right: about what is happening, about what should happen, and about what it means. And so he carries on, and his audience with him.

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