Book Review: The Age of Extraction by Tim Wu

While I enjoyed Tim Wu’s The Master Switch, I didn’t like The Age of Extraction. Maybe in The Master Switch Wu was writing of historical events, and this book is about a story that is still being written.

The first chapters of the book give a good explanation about technological platforms, how they came to be, and their power. But most part of the book feels more like rhetoric disguised as analytical work.

The book suggests that tech platforms are abusive and monopolistic by nature. On the first pages of the book, the author states that “technology never has been neutral, but rather reflects ideology and what it is designed to do.”

I strongly disagree with this. Technology is an enabler. By itself, it is neutral. It has no moral intent. It is the use we give technology that gives it an intent and may reflect ideology.

For example, a camera is a technology that can be used for helping a surgeon, or can be used for surveillance. Nuclear energy is another example. Every technology enables new solutions, and poses new problems. That doesn’t make them inherently good or evil.

This distinction has vast implications. Saying that technology reflects ideology lets the actual decision-makers off the hook. But most importantly, if the problem is the tool, then you regulate the tool. If the problem is how power is exercised, then you need a very different approach.

The book proposed solutions are also disappointing. Examples and justifications are contrived. For example, the author mentions the accumulation of land in past centuries as a form of submission of a vast majority into serfdom if not slavery. A real situation, but presented in a simplistic way suggesting that imbalance and unfairness are constitutive of what feudalism is.

Denmark is presented as an example of a country where the distribution of land to the masses led to a generalized booming of society, less injustice, and better wealth distribution. But the story is narrated as if land distribution were the only factor that lead to such prosperity.

Failed experiences of the same strategy are not mentioned. Countries like Peru, where small landlords could not afford the technology, investments, and strategies necessary to be successful in modern farming, and to cope with the systemic risks of agriculture.

I’m not naive. Companies can be abusive and crush competitors. The market does not always self-correct, that’s what regulation is for. However, that’s not to say that the platform model is evil per se.

It seems that, in the mind of the author, success is bad and should somehow be punished.