MixedThe BafflerOne can imagine a book about the so-called Invisible College that meaningfully examines the role of Silicon Valley in producing and sustaining batshit belief systems, but it is precisely this examination that American Cosmic lacks. And yet, however unintentionally, Pasulka’s book does clarify some of the depressing ironies of living in a world shaped by Big Tech ... We languish in the digital panopticon while the people who built it plot deliverance from their own mortality by uploading their consciousnesses into the Cloud, doomsday prepping their New Zealand bunkers, or communing with extraterrestrials. All the rest of us can do, perhaps, is wait to be abducted, and pray that whatever takes us believes we’re worth saving.
