Hailed by Publishers Weekly as “a potent primer on the need to rein in big tech” and Kirkus Reviews as “a rock-solid plan for
controlling the tech giants,” readers will be energized by Tom
Wheeler’s vision of digital governance. Featured on Barack Obama’s 11/3/23 list of “What I’m Reading on the Rise of Artificial
Intelligence”
An accessible and visionary book that connects the experiences
of the late 19th century’s industrial Gilded Age with its echoes in the 21st century digital Gilded Age.
Hailed by Ken Burns as one of the foremost “explainers” of
technology and its effect throughout history, Tom Wheeler now turns his gaze to the public impact of entrepreneurial innovation. In
Techlash, he connects the experiences of the late 19th century’s
industrial Gilded Age with its echoes in the 21st century digital Gilded Age. In both cases, technology innovation and the great
wealth that it created ran up against the public interest and the rights of others. As with the industrial revolution and the Gilded Age that it created, new digital technology has changed commerce
and culture, creating great wealth in the process, all while being essentially unsupervised.
Warning that today is not the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”
some envision, Wheeler calls for a new era of public interest
oversight that leaves behind industrial era regulatory ideas to
embrace a new process of agile, supervised and enforced code
setting that protects consumers and competition while encouraging continued innovation. Wheeler combines insights from his experience at the highest echelons of business and government to create a
compelling portrait of the need to balance entrepreneurial
innovation with the public good.