RaveThe Irish Times (IRE)... fresh and well-evidenced ... Hari serves up complicated topics in an accessible, personal, journalistic style that revolves around interviews, not heavy scholarship. The book draws on the insights of a dizzying collection of experts – computer scientists, psychologists, educationalists, childhood authorities, neuroscientists, social scientists. But he manages to adeptly present their ideas in a compact way that smoothly conveys key ideas, though sometimes this method gets a bit too TED Talky (yes, Hari has done TED Talks). Complexities are reduced to three summary points here, six there. At moments, you can visualise the stage presentation and slides ... Rightly, Hari rejects the industry-sympathetic arguments that we are the problem, that if we only had more self-control and spent less time scrolling, emailing and clicking, we could fix ourselves ... In its amiable accessibility and its earnest offer of a basic plan for counteraction, Stolen Focus is a perfect companion (or alternative) volume to Zuboff’s more intimidating and academic Surveillance Capitalism. And it certainly attracts, well, attention.
Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang
RaveThe Irish Times (IRE)An Ugly Truth, the devastating profile of Facebook by New York Times writers Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang, will not be this summer’s comfort read, but it may well be its most compelling ... [an] engagingly eviscerating page-turner ... a sort of Greatest Hits collection in terms of scandals and destructive decision-making ... It’s painful, fascinating reading ... This well-written book offers important insights into how this usually inscrutable company, with its dauntingly powerful position in society, has become a social media mammoth with the ability to rattle, if not break, democracies ... a big thumbs-up.
Shoshana Zuboff
RaveThe Irish TimesZuboff’s massive The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (at 700-plus pages) will surely become a pivotal work in defining, understanding and exposing this surreptitious exploitation of our data and, increasingly, our free will ... She meticulously demonstrates how Google, initially a financially struggling search engine, pioneered surveillance capitalism ... [a] slow, focused burn ... her concluding hope is that her dense, thoughtful, at times furious text might be the start of needed public resistance, a determined push to make technology work for, not against us. Her articulate analysis is a badly needed fortification for launching such an effort ... Zuboff’s is the essential, if at times challenging text.
