Against Platforms
Surviving Digital Utopia
Published on 7. January 2025
224 pages
978-1-68589-138-1 (ISBN)
Description
A bold and imaginative critique of the hidden costs of digital life - and a manifesto for a better future . . .
At the turn of the millennium, digital technologies seemed to have immense promise for transforming our society. With these powerful new tools, the thinking went, we would be free to live our best lives, connected to our communities in ways full of infinite potential.
A quarter of a century on, this form of utopianism seems like a cruel mirage. Our lives are more fragmented and pressure-filled as ever, as we race to keep up with technologies that manipulate, command, and drain us at every turn.
So what happened? In Against Platforms, technologist and creator Mike Pepi lays out an explanation of what went wrong - and a manifesto for putting it right.
The key, says Pepi, is that we have been taught that digital technologies are neutral tools, transparent, easily understood, and here to serve us. The reality, Pepi says, is that they are laden with assumptions and collateral consequences - ideology, in other words. And it is this hidden ideology that must be dismantled if we are to harness technology for the fullest expression of our humanity.
At the turn of the millennium, digital technologies seemed to have immense promise for transforming our society. With these powerful new tools, the thinking went, we would be free to live our best lives, connected to our communities in ways full of infinite potential.
A quarter of a century on, this form of utopianism seems like a cruel mirage. Our lives are more fragmented and pressure-filled as ever, as we race to keep up with technologies that manipulate, command, and drain us at every turn.
So what happened? In Against Platforms, technologist and creator Mike Pepi lays out an explanation of what went wrong - and a manifesto for putting it right.
The key, says Pepi, is that we have been taught that digital technologies are neutral tools, transparent, easily understood, and here to serve us. The reality, Pepi says, is that they are laden with assumptions and collateral consequences - ideology, in other words. And it is this hidden ideology that must be dismantled if we are to harness technology for the fullest expression of our humanity.
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Book
01/2025
Melville House Publishing
€19.50
Available immediately
Person
Mike Pepi is a technologist and author who has written widely about the intersection between culture and the Internet. An art critic and theorist, he self-identifies as part of the "tech left" - digital natives who want to reshape technology as a force for progressive good. His writing has been published in Spike, Frieze, e-flux, and other venues.
Content
"13 Myths"
1. Data is never "raw" or neutral. There is always bias and distortion in capture and modeling.
2. The internet is not "a thing." It is a distributed network of many layers. Treating it as its own monolith with a central cultural logic presents problems.
3. Technology does not exist outside of capitalism. With rare exceptions, every application, company, or innovation will have a funding source, a board, and a bottom line; and in all cases the logic of capitalism will eventually supersede and control technical tools. What we identify as "tech" is just capitalism, but faster and worse.
4. You can't solve a social problem with a technical solution. Often, applying technical fixes only treat the symptom, and, in failing to address the underlying cause of the problem, makes it worse.
5. If you are not paying for a platform, your data is the product. Attention is data, and data is a commodity. If something is free and connected to a network, beware of the tradeoffs.
6. Platforms are not institutions. Do not confuse them.
7. Decentralization is an illusion. Even distributed networks enforce hierarchies of power and influence.
8. Software is hard. Computing interfaces, rules, interactions, and protocols encode certain behaviors, and for that they should be scrutinized and interrogated as part of the body politic and the built environment.
9. Algorithms are made of people. They are editors, they steer and privilege certain values, and are never objective.
10. Beware of "open access." Information may want to be free, but beware of the consequences. Somewhere, a new gatekeeper will benefit.
11. Information is the enemy of narrative. The more information, the more doubtful the narrative becomes.
12. Crowdsourcing is a race to the bottom. Labor, knowledge, and education are cheapened when forced to compete on a platform. Making it easier to perform a task has massive externalities.
13. Your brain is not a computer. And, your computer is not a brain. There are things that cannot be automated, and intelligences that machines cannot have.
1. Data is never "raw" or neutral. There is always bias and distortion in capture and modeling.
2. The internet is not "a thing." It is a distributed network of many layers. Treating it as its own monolith with a central cultural logic presents problems.
3. Technology does not exist outside of capitalism. With rare exceptions, every application, company, or innovation will have a funding source, a board, and a bottom line; and in all cases the logic of capitalism will eventually supersede and control technical tools. What we identify as "tech" is just capitalism, but faster and worse.
4. You can't solve a social problem with a technical solution. Often, applying technical fixes only treat the symptom, and, in failing to address the underlying cause of the problem, makes it worse.
5. If you are not paying for a platform, your data is the product. Attention is data, and data is a commodity. If something is free and connected to a network, beware of the tradeoffs.
6. Platforms are not institutions. Do not confuse them.
7. Decentralization is an illusion. Even distributed networks enforce hierarchies of power and influence.
8. Software is hard. Computing interfaces, rules, interactions, and protocols encode certain behaviors, and for that they should be scrutinized and interrogated as part of the body politic and the built environment.
9. Algorithms are made of people. They are editors, they steer and privilege certain values, and are never objective.
10. Beware of "open access." Information may want to be free, but beware of the consequences. Somewhere, a new gatekeeper will benefit.
11. Information is the enemy of narrative. The more information, the more doubtful the narrative becomes.
12. Crowdsourcing is a race to the bottom. Labor, knowledge, and education are cheapened when forced to compete on a platform. Making it easier to perform a task has massive externalities.
13. Your brain is not a computer. And, your computer is not a brain. There are things that cannot be automated, and intelligences that machines cannot have.
