The new book by Loretta Napoleoni, journalist and essayist, was released on April 16th in the United States. The volume is titled “Technocapitalism: The Rise of New Robber Barons and the Fight for Common Good”, Seven Stories Press editions. The text explains and analyzes the way in which the “new barons” like Jeff Bezos […]
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The new book by was released on April 16th in the United States Loretta Napoleoni, journalist and essayist. The volume is titled “Technocapitalism: The Rise of New Robber Barons and the Fight for Common Good”, editions Seven Stories Press. The text explains and analyzes the way in which the “new barons” like Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta o Elon Musk of Tesla have now assumed full control of the technology, removing it from uses intended for the common good and profiting from it politics of fear as well as from the marketing of anything. Fifteen chapters ranging from the universe bitcoin to the crisis of nation states, up to Modern monetary theory and others carbon credit system which is not giving the desired results.
Technology giants like Google, Facebook, Apple, Uber and Microsoft, we read, never intended to spread democracy. By controlling and owning the technology they are the absolute masters today. Now, with the spread ofartificial intelligence in the labor market, companies like Uber are able to reduce personnel costs to the bare minimum, further compressing rights and salaries.
It is described in the book the genesis of a new paradigm, produced by a period of extraordinary evolution in which the acceleration of change has caused paralysis, induced by anxiety, from the collapse of FTX to AI, from the involvement of private space companies in the war in Ukraine, from inflation to the inconvenient truth about environmental consequences of electric batteries.
Technological transformation is occurring at a speed that is unmanageable for most of us. We must fight for our common good to face today’s real challenges, namely the climate crisis, militarism and the unscrupulousness inherent to capitalism. The book therefore suggests some ways to do this. The same author and on similar themes, also available in Italian, are mentioned “Rogue Economy” (Il Saggiatore) and “Maonomics” (Bur).
