Meganets: How Digital Forces Beyond Our Control Commandeer Our Daily Lives and Inner Realities

Meganets are the largest global digital forces that influence our daily lives, operating beyond the control of individuals, companies, and governments. They have a life of their own, resisting attempts to control them and modifying themselves in response to user behavior. David Auerbach's analysis reveals that the conventional wisdom that the Googles and Facebooks of this world are tightly run algorithmic entities is a myth, and that the efforts at reform run into a brick wall. He suggests that we can tame meganets through counterintuitive measures such as making algorithms fair and bias-free and whether AI can be a tool for good or evil.

Format: Hardback
Length: 352 pages
Publication date: 06 April 2023
Publisher: PublicAffairs,U.S.

The autonomous digital forces jolting our lives - as uncontrollable as the weather and plate tectonics - are transforming life, society, culture, and politics.

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 Facebooks of this world are tightly run algorithmic entities is a myth. No one is really in control.

- The efforts of governments and companies to regulate and control the meganet are doomed to failure, as the meganet is too complex and decentralized to be tamed.

- The meganet has the potential to create new forms of social organization and political power, but only if we can learn to harness its power for the benefit of all.

- The meganet is a reminder that we are all connected to each other in ways that we cannot fully understand, and that we must be mindful of the impact that our actions and choices have on the world around us.

In conclusion, Auerbach's exploration of the meganet is a fascinating and thought-provoking study of the power of autonomous digital forces to shape our lives and the world around us. His insights challenge us to think critically about the role that technology plays in our society and to work towards creating a more equitable and sustainable future.

Dimension: 235 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781541774445