Books like The People's Platform by Astra Taylor

Shoshana Zuboff explains how digital data is turned into a new market form—surveillance capitalism—where corporations predict and shape behavior for profit, reshaping power, privacy, and democracy in the digital age.

Jaron Lanier argues that social media erodes autonomy, truth, and dignity, urging readers to delete their accounts and imagine a more humane digital future.

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think explains how the ability to collect, store, and analyze large volumes of information is reshaping society, technology, and decision‑making.

Eli Pariser explains how the rise of personalization on the Web limits the information we consume, turning search engines into invisible filters that shape our news, opinions, and online experiences.

Safiya Umoja Noble exposes how search engine algorithms embed and amplify sexist and racist biases, especially against women of color, revealing a digital environment that privileges whiteness and marginalizes people of color.

Evgeny Morozov explores how digital technology reshapes society, questioning the delegation of political, cultural, and moral responsibilities to algorithms and the Internet.

"If you wanted to build a machine that would distribute propaganda to millions of people, distract them from important issues, energize hatred and bigotry, erode social trust, undermine respectable journalism, foster doubts about science, and engage in massive surveillance all at once, you would make something a lot like Facebook. Of course, none of that was part of the plan. In Antisocial Media, Siva Vaidhyanathan explains how Facebook devolved from an innocent social site hacked together by Harvard students into a force that, while it may make personal life just a little more pleasurable, makes democracy a lot more challenging. It's an account of the hubris of good intentions, a missionary spirit, and an ideology that sees computer code as the universal solvent for all human problems...Both authoritative and trenchant, Antisocial Media shows how Facebook's mission went so wrong."--Book description, Amazon.com.

120 pages ; 22 cm

In *Rewire*, Ethan Zuckerman examines how the Internet’s connectivity promises can fall short, analyzing why digital reach often fails to foster true global understanding and outlining innovations that can bridge cultural gaps.

"The Internet and Society explores the impact of the internet on modern culture beyond the fashionable celebration of 'anything goes' online culture or the overly pessimistic conceptions tainted by the logic of domination. In this new work, James Slevin develops an account of the internet and relates it to the analysis of culture and communications in late modern societies.". "This accessible and non-technical book will be of particular interest to students of media, communications and cultural studies, and of interest to anyone concerned with the effect of new technologies on modern culture and society."--BOOK JACKET.

Entrepreneur Andrew Keen warns of what he sees as a narcissistic and cancerous culture developing with the invent of Web 2.0, whereby professionals are put out of business and the value of the media that we consume drops immensely.