EU
  
You are currently viewing the European Union version of the site.
Would you like to switch to your local site?
52 MIN READ TIME

Death by a thousand clicks

When the owners of the New Republic sacked the Editor Franklin Foer in December 2014, the New York-based magazine was plunged into crisis—a number of senior staff resigned and many feared for its future. For all its intellectual prestige, the magazine hadn’t been notching up enough online hits, and Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook who bought it in 2012, wanted to shake things up. He hired a former journalist at the celebrity gossip website Gawker to re-invent the New Republic for the digital era. It was a portentous moment for anyone interested in the future of publishing, apparently pitting the values of traditional journalism against the commercial cynicism of Big Tech.

In his new book World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech, Foer charges Facebook and its peers with having brought about “the catastrophic collapse of the news business and the degradation of American civic culture.” He casts the world of online media as a creeping dystopia, arguing that its obsession with digital interconnectedness is incompatible with the sanctity of the individual. For Foer, the idea that humanity can be morally re-shaped through the power of group scrutiny— what Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has termed “radical transparency”—raises the chilling spectre of a society where the individual is subjugated to the collective.

Read the complete article and many more in this issue of Prospect Magazine
Purchase options below
If you own the issue, Login to read the full article now.
Single Digital Issue Feb-18
 
€6,99 / issue
This issue and other back issues are not included in a new subscription. Subscriptions include the latest regular issue and new issues released during your subscription. Prospect Magazine
PRINT SUBSCRIPTION? Available at magazine.co.uk, the best magazine subscription offers online.
 

This article is from...


View Issues
Prospect Magazine
Feb-18
VIEW IN STORE

Other Articles in this Issue


Prospect
The prying profiteers
Only two decades ago, when Google was founded, the
Letters & opinions
Serving time
Chris Tilbury is right to draw readers’ attention to
It’s the democracy, stupid
Adam Posen’s cardinal error in his gloomy prognostication
The truth shall be ignored
Alan Johnson (“The Orwellian eye,” January) writes
Brown’s legacy
Jonathan Freedland captured Gordon Brown’s character
Disrupt economics
I enjoyed your look at different aspects of the future
Applying the brakes
Dani Rodrik reminds us that globalisation is not some
Lost-in-hyphenation
May I join the hordes of pedants emailing to say that
In fact
Golf is the most boring sport to watch for Britons:
How the NHS will die
In the explosion of “self-pay” procedures, we are witnessing the beginning of the end
Reclaim the streets
If public spaces are privately owned, where can we protest?
Confessions of a cosmopolitan
There is no need to shut up about difference—but we should talk more about what we have in common
How shrinks can grow our politics
Psychoanalysis can help us make sense of tyranny
The slow road to Jerusalem
On your way to the holy city, there is one snack that you must buy
Speed data
Les misérables
The French have many reasons to be cheerful—and yet they’re not
The Duel
Can trophy hunting ever be justified?
YES It’s the naked hypocrisy of it all that is the
Features
Web of spies
Five corporate giants have captured the open space of the internet. Two, Google and Facebook, have created an entirely new surveillance capitalism. But we’re too hooked to care
Life in the slow lane
Axing net neutrality will make some sites sluggish, and speed up corporate capture
Ballot bots
They’re real, they’re over here and they’re spreading poison.
Policing the net
Beijing is estimated to pay over a quarter of a million
Prospect Portrait
The opponent
At the end of last year, he saved the prime minister. In 2018, he holds the fate of the whole country in his hands. So it’s probably a good time to pay the Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, a little attention, suggests Christine Ockrent
Decline and fall
As elections loom in March, Italy has reached the point where the return of
WHO WERE ISLAMIC STATE?
Mosul is liberated. But there is no end to the suffering of its citizens, many of whom are now falling victim to collective punishment
Unorthodox diplomacy
Churchmen in Moscow and London are negotiating far more effectively than their governments. But are they doing God’s work, or Putin’s?
Touch of evil
In the wake of the Weinstein scandal, once admired male writers, actors and filmmakers have been disgraced. Can we still love the work of artists whose behaviour we loathe?
Today’s Manufacturing Workforce Challenge
Talented people are the backbone of every successful business. As the UK faces up to potentially dramatic changes in its economic landscape and the risks and opportunities that flow from new technologies, it has never been more important for manufacturing companies to have access to a sustainable supply of recruits with the right skills and to develop their current workforce with the skills necessary to translate business strategy into the healthy returns that fuel our prosperity.
The way we were
Sexual predation in America
Extracts from memoirs and diaries, chosen by Ian Irvine
Arts & books
Amazing adventures
Kapow! Comics and graphic novels have never been more creative—and even academics are falling under their spell, argues Kim O’Connor
The great game lost
Britain’s 13-year-long war in Afghanistan was a saga of misadventure and miscalculation against an enemy we never knew, says Ahmed Rashid
Raging bull
Donald Trump’s reckless and gossip-addicted biographer is a perfect match for his subject, finds Sam Tanenhaus
Debt and gratitude
An ex-minister’s love letter to universities offers an optimistic verdict, finds Howard Davies
Books in brief
In his new book, Wounds, the veteran BBC correspondent
Recommends
In 1944 the sculptor Naum Gabo argued that abstract
Life
Leith on language
“Do you have an ice cream?”my wife asked the guy in
Life of the mind
“I am going to have to sack him, but I know everyone
Matters of taste
I got up at 3am on a wet December morning in Paris
Wine
There’s a renewed enthusiasm among winemakers for blending.
DIY investor
As the end of the financial year comes into view, better
TRADE MUST COME FIRST
Ten steps to promote trade and increase exports:
Special report: Transport
Special report: Transport
Fares are rising, and Britain is gridlocked, putting travel on the political agenda as
TRANSPORT FOR THE NORTH
A Strategic Transport Plan to Transform
Things to do this month
Prospect events
Join us at our Book Clubs, talks and debates
The generalist by Didymus
The generalist by Didymus
1 Bagatelle in A Minor for piano; the autographed score
Enigmas puzzles
Adder revelation
Mr and Mrs Sum were sitting on the patio, chatting
How to enter
The winner receives a copy of White King: Charles I—Traitor
Brief encounter
Novelist
Chat
X
Pocketmags Support