The Age of Extraction

One of the world's foremost exponents of anti-monopoly law explains how Big Tech is strangling our economies and how to stop it.

Today's tech platforms are some of history's most advanced tools for extracting as much as possible—data, attention, profit-margins—from everyone else. As they become essential, we are at risk of building an economy that is perpetually unfair for much of humanity.

Places and spaces where people can exchange information and goods have been at the heart of every economy and every civilization in history, but today's global platforms—as provided by Amazon, Google, Apple, Meta, and others—are different. Instead of providing value, they extract it, creating vast disparities in wealth and power between the haves and have-nots. For the first time in history, we have the ability to create sustainable prosperity for all, but currently that wealth is concentrated in a tiny number of hands. It isn't abundance that's the problem; it is distribution.

In this brilliantly engaging, frequently surprising account, Tim Wu, one of the world's foremost experts on anti-monopoly law, draws on fascinating case studies in the history of technology's explosive rise to demonstrate emphatically that breaking monopolies will ultimately unleash creativity and growth—and reduce the vast inequality that inevitably leads to social upheaval and political chaos. Wu also sets out an alternative blueprint that preserves the economic flourishing that platforms catalyse, allowing tech platforms to play a major role in creating and sustaining an economic model of prosperity not just for the few but for the many.

The Age of Extraction is an essential read for understanding the impact of technology on our economies and how we can foster a more equitable future.