Outrage Machine: How Tech is Amplifying Discontent, Undermining Democracy, and Pushing Us Towards Chaos

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Foreword by Jonathan Haidt, author of THE RIGHTEOUS MIND

A noticeable shift has occurred in the last two decades. The prevalence of hate speech online. The turn toward authoritarianism and populism across the western world. Every day, it seems, we're hearing more angry voices and fearful opinions, we're seeing more threats and frightening news, and we're reacting faster and less rationally.

The cause is hidden in plain sight: for the first time, almost all of the information we consume is controlled and curated by algorithms designed to capture our emotional attention. This, media researcher and strategic advisor Tobias Rose-Stockwell argues, is the outrage machine. It is the wide-cast net of social media that is propelled by tech, has been exploited by all of us, and which has been allowed to steadily replace our newspapers, emergency communication systems, town halls, churches, and more. And this ubiquity has had unintended consequences.

OUTRAGE MACHINE reveals how to navigate a world that has been thoroughly disrupted by technology. It demystifies the underlying machinery that has come to control us and will help guide readers toward reflection rather than reaction. Pulling together 15 years of research and inquiry, Rose-Stockwell gives readers a language with which to comprehend what is happening to society, and offer new mental models for how to manage our time, our technology, and our attention, as well as big-picture recommendations for the way forward, how to redesign these platforms, and methods for fixing this broken system before it changes us for ever.

Author Bio

Tobias Rose-Stockwell is a writer, technologist and media researcher who explores the effects of social media on society and democracy. Tobias's work has been featured in major outlets such as FastCompany, Quartz, Medium, NPR, the BBC and many others. As a media researcher, he has advised the directors of Gannett, one of the largest news organizations in America, as well as local news outlets in the US, on digital strategy. Tobias was previously a guest lecturer at Stanford University on the topic of social enterprise design and technology ventures. He is currently a strategic advisor to Jonathan Haidt's organization, OpenMind, which focuses on depolarizing communities online.