How long does it take to read New Dark Age?

The reading time for New Dark Age varies depending on the reader's speed. However, the Blinkist summary can be read in just 15 minutes.

Who is the author of New Dark Age?

New Dark Age is written by James Bridle.

Technology & the Future

New Dark Age Book Summary - New Dark Age Book explained in key points

Listen to the Intro

00:00

New Dark Age summary

Name: New Dark Age
Rating: 4 (97 reviews)
Author: James Bridle

James Bridle

Technology and the End of the Future

4 (97 ratings)

28 mins

Brief summary

New Dark Age by James Bridle warns of the consequences of tech obsession: misinformation, loss of privacy & humanity's detachment from physical reality.

Topics

Socialism & Capitalist Critique Culture Big Data The Internet Digital Transformation Climate Change

Table of Contents

New Dark Age
Summary of 9 key ideas

Audio & text in the Blinkist app

Key idea 1 of 9

What’s in it for me? Learn how to see our new dark age in a different light.

From social media addiction to fake news to mass surveillance, new technologies have changed our lives, our societies, and even our planet – often, in ways we hadn’t initially anticipated.

Once hailed as the harbingers of a new enlightenment, the internet and other important tools of our networked world seem to have engendered new genres of social and political division, violence and abuse, misinformation and conspiracy theory. Amidst a sea of information, we seem to be plunging into a new dark age: a period where we are able to gather more and more data on our complex world, and yet seem to understand less and less of it.

Now more than ever, we need to learn to think critically through all the uncertainty. We need to investigate the technologies that shape our world and our thinking, and examine where they came from, how they function, and who they serve. These blinks will lay bare some of the vast and unexpected ways that new technologies affect us – and why and how they came to do so.

In these blinks, you learn about

the military project that spawned the computation age;
the rationale behind conspiracy theories; and
the seedy underbelly of YouTube children’s entertainment.

Modern computation originated in military attempts to control the weather.

What do computers have to do with the weather, and what does the weather have to do with the military?

Well, everything. For decades, devising methods to predict and control the weather was a chief concern for Western armies – and in that project lies the origin of modern computation.

The first person to make calculations on atmospheric conditions in order to predict the weather was mathematician Lewis Fry Richardson. This was during World War I, when he was volunteering as a first responder on the Western Front.

Richardson even came up with a thought experiment that could be conceived as the first description of a "computer": he envisioned a pantheon made up of thousands of human mathematicians, each calculating the weather conditions for a particular square of the world, and communicating the results between one another to make further calculations. Such a machine, Richardson dreamed, would be able to accurately predict the weather anywhere, at any moment in time.

His futuristic idea didn’t come into view again until World War II, when big military research spending spurred the advent of machine computation. The Manhattan Project, a US military research project that led to the creation of the atomic bomb, is closely linked to the development of the first computers. Many of these first computers, such as the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) from 1946, were used to perform automated calculations to simulate the impact of different bombs and missiles under certain weather conditions.

Often, however, the military origins and purposes of the computers were concealed.

In 1948, for example, IBM installed its Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC) in full view of the public in a shop window in New York. But while the public was told the computer was calculating astronomical positions, it was actually working on a secret program called Hippo – carrying out calculations to simulate hydrogen bomb explosions.

From the beginning, the complex, hidden workings of computers provided a convenient cloak for obfuscating their actual functions.

Most of the time, though, they didn’t even carry out their actual functions all that well. The history of computation is full of anecdotes that illustrate how computers’ oversimplified view of the world, their inability to distinguish between reality and simulation, and bad data can have serious consequences for their human users. For example, the US computer network SAGE, which was used to integrate atmospheric and military data during the Cold War, is infamous for its near-fatal bloopers, such as mistaking a flock of migrating birds for an incoming Soviet bomber fleet.

New technologies and climate change are inextricably linked.

Climate change is what philosopher Timothy Morton calls a hyperobject: like the internet, it’s so vast and pervasive a thing that we simply cannot think of it in a meaningful way. Instead, we just witness its imprints on the world around us.

One such dramatic imprint is the Syrian conflict of recent years, described by many observers as the first climate war in history. Due to rising global temperatures, between 2006 and 2011, the Syrian countryside suffered massive, unprecedented droughts. Huge swathes of farmland became unusable, and nearly 85 percent of livestock died. The resulting demographic pressure of farmers fleeing to the cities, and built-up resentment about President Bashar al-Assad’s handling of the situation, finally resulted in the armed conflict that became palpable to the West as the refugee crisis.

The big data fallacy has plunged scientific research into crisis.

If you’re a little familiar with the world of computation, you’ll have heard of Moore’s law: the idea that the raw computing power of our devices doubles every two years. Since its first formulation in 1965, this law has held approximately true. But as you can probably attest from casual observation, the fact that technology is getting ever smaller and faster doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s making our lives any easier.

Tech optimists who cite Moore’s law usually do so in the spirit of computational optimism. They believe that more computation is always better, and that the more data we collect and process of the world, the more our understanding of it increases.

As a tool of capitalism, technology drives inequality.

On the surface, Slough is a pretty unremarkable, small town some 25 miles outside of London. Unbeknownst to most, however, the many vast and anonymous warehouses that line its main road form the physical base of some of the most important parts of our digital world. For example, one of them, given the unassuming name LD4, houses the data servers of the London Stock Exchange.

The fibre optic cables that lead to and from LD4 carry financial information of almost unimaginable value, transporting and receiving it to and from other financial data centers around the world at the speed of light. This super-speedy network between companies, investors and markets has given rise to a new type of financial exchange: high-frequency trading.

Machine learning encodes the bias of our past and carries it into our future.

There’s a lore about an AI built by the US Army that illustrates the dangers and limits of machine learning, by which is meant: teaching computers how to think.

Allegedly, the army tried to train a computer to recognize camouflaged tanks in a forest. To do so, they presented it with picture after picture of forests with tanks hidden in them, and picture after picture of forests with no tank, until the AI had learned to tell the test images apart perfectly. But out in the field, the AI failed completely. It was no better than a human at guessing whether there was a tank in a particular forest or not.

Our technology and data are increasingly controlled by governments and intelligence agencies.

In a previous blink, we considered the hydrogen bomb simulation computer, SSEC, which conducted its top-secret calculations in full view of the public.

Ever since World War II, intelligence agencies such as the CIA and NSA have spent millions of dollars on developing secret technologies, the existence or true purpose of which the world only becomes privy to decades after the fact – if ever. For example, it was the CIA, not the US Army or Air Force, that developed the first drones, years before they became a staple in modern warfare.

Conspiracy theories provide the comfort of simple narratives in a complex world.

Since the beginning of history, humans have been inclined to spin complex events into simple stories to make sense of the world. In a way, our conception of history is, itself, an example of oversimplification.

Of course, none of these narratives can ever encompass the full, multidimensional truth. But in our networked, information-saturated present, many stories people tell themselves about the world seem further off the mark than ever.

Paired with financial incentive, algorithms spawn disturbing cultural products.

Have you ever fallen into a YouTube spiral? Clicking from one suggested video to the next, you find yourself in ever-weirder corners of the video platform that barely classify as human entertainment.

One reason why there are so many vloggers, self-made entertainers, and increasingly, bots vying for your attention on YouTube, is that successful videos can make a lot of money from advertising. The music video for the viral Korean pop hit “Gangnam Style,” for example, earned eight million dollars from its first billion views.

In order to live with meaning in a new dark age, we need to abandon computational optimism and embrace complexity.

At Google’s 2013 Zeitgeist conference, an annual gathering of tech elites and politicians which discusses the state and future of technology, CEO Eric Schmidt made a startling claim. If camera phones had been around in 1994, the horrifying Rwandan genocide of that year would never have happened, because people would have been able to film and share news about the atrocities taking place.

Schmidt’s idea is rooted in a belief shared by many of his peers: that making something visible automatically fixes it, and that new technologies are making the world a better, safer, and easier-to-manage place. As we’ve seen in the previous blinks, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Want to see all full key ideas from New Dark Age?

Key ideas in New Dark Age

More knowledge in less time

Read or listen

Get the key ideas from nonfiction bestsellers in minutes, not hours.

Find your next read

Get book lists curated by experts and personalized recommendations.

Shortcasts ^New

We’ve teamed up with podcast creators to bring you key insights from podcasts.

What is New Dark Age about?

New Dark Age (2018) investigates the fundamental paradox of our digital age: as new technologies allow us to gather more and more data on our world, we understand less and less of it. Examining the history, politics and geography of the complex digital network we are enmeshed in, James Bridle sheds new light on the central issues of our time, from climate change to wealth inequality to post-factual politics, and explains how we can live with purpose in an era of uncertainty.

New Dark Age Review

New Dark Age (2018) by James Bridle is a thought-provoking exploration of the profound impact technology and the internet have on our society. Here's why this book is worth reading:

Offers a comprehensive analysis of how the interconnected world affects our understanding of knowledge, truth, and power, highlighting the significant issues we face.
Investigates the unseen consequences of our reliance on technology, exposing the vulnerabilities and risks that come with our digital infrastructure.
Presents a compelling argument for the need to question and actively shape our digital future, encouraging readers to engage with the complex challenges of our time.

Best quote from New Dark Age

Complexity is not a condition to be tamed, but a lesson to be learned.

—James Bridle

Who should read New Dark Age?

Tech skeptics and tech enthusiasts
Critical thinkers fascinated by the geopolitics of our networked world
Anyone interested in the silly and profound ways technology shapes our lives

About the Author

James Bridle is an artist, publisher, and writer on technology whose work has appeared in the Guardian, Wired, Frieze, Observer, Atlantic and many other publications. New Dark Age is his second book.

Categories with New Dark Age

Technology & the Future

Book summaries like New Dark Age

Tools and Weapons

Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne

The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age

Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It

Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work

19 min

4.2

The Upside of Your Dark Side

Todd Kashdan and Robert Biswas-Diener

Why Being Your Whole Self – Not Just Your “Good” Self – Drives Success and Fulfillment

23 min

4.0

Understanding Artificial Intelligence

Nicolas Sabouret

A Straightforward Explanation of AI and Its Possibilities

How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity

The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy

A Journey to the Center of the Internet

10 min

3.6

The Origins of Totalitarianism

Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt's landmark work about Europe's anti-Semitic and imperialist roots

19 min

4.6

Everyday Millionaires

Chris Hogan

How Ordinary People Built Extraordinary Wealth – and How You Can Too

22 min

4.2

How Economics Explains the World

Andrew Leigh

A Short History of Humanity

20 min

4.0

The Epic of Gilgamesh

Anonymous

A timeless tale of friendship, mortality, and the search for meaning

The Only Difference Between Success and Failure

14 min

3.9

Read People Like a Book

Patrick King

How to Analyze, Understand, and Predict People’s Emotions, Thoughts, Intentions, and Behaviors

21 min

3.9

Lee Kuan Yew

The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking

Managing Your Emotions - So They Don't Manage You

22 min

4.2

The Psychology of Money

Morgan Housel

Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness

22 min

4.4

Super Thinking

Gabriel Weinberg with Lauren McCann

The Big Book of Mental Models

The Art of Winning in an Age of Uncertainty

A Four Thousand Year History

30 min

3.7

Life at the Speed of Light

J. Craig Venter

From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life

22 min

4.3

Raising Mentally Strong Kids

Amen MD Daniel G. & Charles Fay

How to Combine the Power of Neuroscience with Love and Logic to Grow Confident, Kind, Responsible, and Resilient Children and Young Adults

Why You Can't Pay Attention – and How to Think Deeply Again

25 min

4.5

Team of Teams

General Stanley McChrystal with Tantum Collins

New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

20 min

4.3

How to Talk to Anyone

Leil Lowndes

92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships

Six Studies in World Strategy

20 min

4.3

This Is Your Brain on Food

Uma Naidoo

A Guide to the Foods that Fight Depression, Anxiety, and More

17 min

4.4

Competing in the New World of Work

Keith Ferrazzi

How Radical Adaptability Separates the Best From the Rest

4 min

3.3

Sun Tzu and the Art of Business

Mark R. McNeilly

Six Strategic Principles for Managers

17 min

4.5

How to Take Smart Notes

Sönke Ahrens

One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers

The Power to Charge Your Life with Money, Meaning, and Momentum

Design Your Business to Run Itself

High-Performance Secrets from the Best of the Best

21 min

4.4

Talking to My Daughter About the Economy

Yanis Varoufakis

A Brief History of Capitalism

26 min

4.4

The Omnivore's Dilemma

Michael Pollan

A Natural History of Four Meals

What Killed Capitalism

17 min

4.4

Getting It Done When You're Depressed

Julie A. Fast

50 Strategies for Keeping Your Life on Track

What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference

Things You Wish You Were Taught in School

14 min

4.2

Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace

Dennis Reina

Building Effective Relationships in Your Organization

15 min

3.8

To Hell with the Hustle

Jefferson Bethke

Reclaiming Your Life in an Overworked, Overspent, and Overconnected World

The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

Understanding the Anger of Britain’s Underclass

25 min

4.1

13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do

Amy Morin

Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success

Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life

16 min

4.1

Man’s Search for Meaning

Viktor Frankl

The harrowing experiences of the author in a concentration camp

The First-time Dad's Pregnancy Handbook

How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

21 min

4.6

How To Read Literature Like A Professor

Thomas C. Foster

A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

15 min

4.1

People ❤️ Blinkist

Sven O.

It's highly addictive to get core insights on personally relevant topics without repetition or triviality. Added to that the apps ability to suggest kindred interests opens up a foundation of knowledge.

Thi Viet Quynh N.

Great app. Good selection of book summaries you can read or listen to while commuting. Instead of scrolling through your social media news feed, this is a much better way to spend your spare time in my opinion.

Jonathan A.

Life changing. The concept of being able to grasp a book's main point in such a short time truly opens multiple opportunities to grow every area of your life at a faster rate.

Renee D.

Great app. Addicting. Perfect for wait times, morning coffee, evening before bed. Extremely well written, thorough, easy to use.