New Dark Age – Technology and the End of the Future by James Bridle

February 10, 2022 – Thornbury

A few years ago you might have read an article about some truly disturbing algorithmically created YouTube videos for kids — this is that author's book, exploring the new era humanity heads into as we hand over control to automation, big data and a networked world.

This is a Verso book, so expect a level of dense, but I will say I found this extraordinarily readable and deeply interesting.

What is the effect of too much surveillance? How do we see the system when we live inside it? What effect does the new dark age have on our ability to solve complex problems, like climate change? How does algorithmic domination shape not only how we think but what we become?

What really makes this book is the narrative Bridle puts forward reaching back into the past, drawing a path that we have been on for perhaps longer than we think.

Tracing the lineage of the new dark age back to the Manhattan project, and before, to Lewis Fry Richardson's primitive weather models, Bridle leads us through a cautionary tale of humankind's thirst for ever more knowledge, where eventually we find ourselves in a world saturated with data and gasping for breath.

At what point do we admit that more data isn't helping? When do we stop collecting and start acting? How much complexity can we handle? Definitely one of my favourite recent reads.