Bit Tyrants

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