PositiveLos Angeles Review of Books... an ideas-oriented book: character development and plot are less important than building a world in order to satirize Big Tech. Does this approach add value to existing nonfiction tech criticism? ... Does Eggers do what my much drier form of tech criticism can’t do? Of course! Whereas Neil Postman once warned we’re Amusing Ourselves to Death, Eggers invites readers to laugh at absurd, dystopian scenes that showcase the decline of privacy and autonomy ... Eggers, it seems, needs to caricature the public, painting it as an easily manipulatable group, in order to tell his story ... Even when Eggers describes a few anti-tech holdouts and a small geographic area of resistance, he doesn’t break from this mold of painting the majority in absurdly broad strokes. And yet, to be turned off by Eggers’s unrealistic scenarios is to misunderstand how the layers of mockery and condescension enable him to do something brilliant when he describes the public accepting ever more disquieting product ... His exquisite portrayal of how this dynamic builds over time complements scholarly descriptions of toxic technologies becoming normalized ... Contemporary tech criticism tends to be depressing because Big Tech companies wield massive power that markets and regulation can’t seem to temper. However, fiction writers like Eggers have the freedom to imagine dystopian spin-offs and better worlds.
