Even as she elegantly conveys the nightmare of the Artificial State, her wistful treatment of what it’s replacing can verge on sentimental ... Parts...read like an elegy for a vanishing world. But Lepore says it isn’t too late. We humans know how to make a mess of things; we also know how to imagine a different future.
The book is urgent and wide-ranging, but it replaces the handpicked case study with selective narrative history ... Lepore is undoubtedly more interested in tracing the intellectual history of machine rule than in explaining its institutional underpinnings. The result is an often vivid and at times unsettling account ... Lepore has written an entertaining exploration tracing Silicon Valley’s self- image to the science fiction on which its architects grew up. Yet her narrative history often comes at the expense of the institutional questions her argument raises. She concludes by stating that knowledge of the past is essential, with which it is hard to disagree, but what exactly does the past teach us to do? The lessons she draws come down to: do not surrender judgement to machines. As counsel, this has appeal. As a guide to explaining or reversing institutional decay, environmental damage and democratic decline, it is less satisfying.
Intriguing, jewel-like stories are Lepore’s hallmark, and The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State sparkles with them ... Deeply ominous ... She concludes the book with an exhortation to 'unplug' and connect with nature and animals but prescribes nothing further. This is no doubt a good idea. But in the face of a technological revolution that threatens to undermine the entire world order, logging off to touch grass can only be the first step.
Staggering, sobering, yet essential reading for all who want to understand the arc of this increasingly digital, online, corporate, and out-of-control world.
