A farsighted book that portrays the devastating consequences of unfettered surveillance capitalism.
The mutual exclusivity of democracy and surveillance capitalism.
Early in his prescient book, legal scholar Brescia points out a stunning irony. We all know this is the era of “surveillance capitalism,” in which the internet habitually violates our virtual space. We understand that purportedly free social media companies (a.k.a. “Digital Pinkertons”) effectively exist to co-opt and sell the private data (“political privacy”) that we inadvertently shed and surrender upon entering their sites. But few focus on the fact that this is happening because, on balance, while the law does not protect the integrity of our identity, it does protect that of the social media companies exploiting us. The result: relentless “digital abuse.” This all matters on a level far beyond that of the individual, Brescia says. For political privacy is critical to a functioning democracy, yet social media users are increasingly manhandled by third parties that analyze their online habits, texts, searches, comments, etc., to nudge them to actions they wouldn’t normally take, from buying products they don’t want, to casting self-defeating election votes. Indeed, the 2016 presidential campaign, marked by rampant misinformation, was all about manipulation via digital abuse, he posits (and might well have said about the 2024 election, if the book were written slightly later). Brescia explores in depth the different ways that “laws, norms, constitutional protections, and practices” surrounding political privacy “essentially provide immunity to those companies that have access to our digital selves [and] creates a form of moral hazard in which those same companies are largely free from oversight and responsibility.” But he does believe there’s hope if we follow the patterns of past successful civil rights movements, where there was a gradual convergence of understanding—coming from disparate groups of legislators, lawyers, academics, activists, and industry tycoons—that for democracy to thrive, it must protect and never again “extract” the teeming private selves at the heart of it.
A farsighted book that portrays the devastating consequences of unfettered surveillance capitalism.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781479832330
Page Count: 224
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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