● The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity
Tim Wu
Review via Financial Times
Tim Wu is a titan in the world of competition policy in digital markets. He is a distinguished legal scholar who coined the term net neutrality; the author of two significant books, The Master Switch (2010) and The Attention Merchants (2016), about the accumulation of market power by big tech companies; and was president Joe Biden’s special assistant for technology and competition policy as the administration began to attack the power of the digital giants.
This record of insight, indeed prescience, makes his new book, The Age of Extraction, a must-read. The subtitle says it all — How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity. The analysis of economic dominance is unchanged from his previous books, but the tone now is both urgent and pessimistic.