Cory Doctorow

The Big Tech firms are dividing the world between them

The internet has left every aspect of our lives dependent on a fearsome, impersonal oligarchy, says James Ball

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issue 15 August 2020
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  • The System: Who Owns the Internet and How it Owns Us

    James Ball

    Bloomsbury, pp. 288, £20

To look upon a freshly painted wall is to behold a smooth surface; to look at it through a magnifier is to see a rough and irregular landscape — but turn the magnification up sufficiently and see it become regular again, a geometric matrix of atoms held in molecular bonds.

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