Digital Is Destroying Everything: What the Tech Giants Won’t Tell You about How Robots, Big Data and Algorithms Are Radically Remaking Your Future

Digital marketing executive Edwards has some valid, if familiar, points to make about the wide-ranging effects of digital communications technology. According to Edwards, the ever-growing role of the online world has crippled brick and mortar retail, endangered the future of cities, weakened human connections, exterminated privacy, and made perpetual underemployment almost inevitable—and that’s just a partial list. Edwards does acknowledge the hyperbole of the title and the book’s general thrust; the penultimate chapter makes an effort to enumerate how the interconnected world has changed lives for the better. He notes how hard some things were before the digital revolution, and believes that it’s “possible that digital is the equivalent of agriculture in the evolution of the species.” Despite this effort at balance, readers will come away with a growing sense of unease at how insidiously digital advances have invaded our lives and modes of thinking. (June)