The Peoples Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age

(Paperback)

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From a cutting-edge cultural commentator, a bold and brilliant challenge to cherished notions of the internet as the great leveler of our age.
The internet has been hailed as an unprecedented democratising force, a place where all can be heard and everyone can participate equally. But how true is this claim In a seminal dismantling of techno-utopian visions, The Peoples Platform argues that for all that we tweet and like and share, the internet in fact reflects and amplifies real-world inequities at least as much as it ameliorates them. Online, just as off-line, attention and influence largely accrue to those who already have plenty of both.

What we have seen so far, Astra Taylor says, has been not a revolution but a rearrangement. Although Silicon Valley tycoons have eclipsed Hollywood moguls, a handful of giants like Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook remain the gatekeepers. And the worst habits of the old media model - the pressure to seek easy celebrity, to be quick and sensational above all - have proliferated online, where aggregating the work of others is the surest way to attract eyeballs and ad revenue. When culture is free, creative work has diminishing value and advertising fuels the system. The new order looks suspiciously like the old one.

We can do better, Taylor insists. The online world does offer a unique opportunity, but a democratic culture that supports diverse voices and work of lasting value will not spring up from technology alone. If we want the internet to truly be a peoples platform, we will have to make it so.

Reviews

If you want to understand the web not as some invasive, alien dimension but an extension of our own world, The Peoples Platform is an excellent place to start. Oliver Moody, The Times

We need books like this [Taylors] done a lot of homework and writes well, so The People's Platform will be an invaluable primer for anyone seeking to understand why our networked world isn't all that it is cracked up to be. John Naughton, Observer

Public discourse on the subject of technology is skewed to the margins, to the extremes credit is due, then, to Astra Taylor, for trying to reject such simplistic divisions She has highlighted a genuine problem facing the world the difficulty of promoting art, culture and public- spiritedness in the internet age. **** Tom Chivers, Sunday Telegraph

There have been a lot of books about how the Internet is changing our world, but this is absolutely one of the best. Beautifully written and highly recommended. David Byrne

Sane, lucid, and generous. This book adjusted my thinking on several scores. Jonathan Lethem

This timely book lands just as the valuations of technology companies soar and cracks have begun to show in the publics reverence for the likes of Google and Facebook The Peoples Platform is packed with facts that give weight to this argument Taylors nightmare and Zuckerbergs dream may well come true: well be living in a Facebook world. Hannah Kuchler, Financial Times

Perhaps the most important book about the digital age so far this century. Douglas Rushkoff

The scariest book Ive read in a while is also the most exhilarating: there is no better, stronger picture of our bleak new technological landscape and the peppy delusions and deceptions of its profiteers than The Peoples Platform. But knowledge is power, and Taylor gives us a picture so clear it empowers us to find a way forward through the debris. Read it and revolt. Rebecca Solnit

Author Bio

Astra Taylor is a writer and documentary filmmaker. Her films include Zizek!, a feature documentary about the worlds most outrageous philosopher, and Examined Life, a series of excursions with contemporary thinkers. Her writing has appeared in The Nation, Salon, Monthly Review, The Baffler and other publications. She lives in New York City.