THE NEW TECHNOLOGY STATE

Raduchel, an American tech company executive, presents a book that had its origin in conversations he had with British Member of Parliament Tom Tugendhat about the societal impact of technology.

More than a decade ago, the author, who’s worked as an adviser and executive for companies such as Sun Microsystems and AOL Time Warner, met Tugendhat at a conference that gathered leaders from various industries. It was an encounter that sparked the author’s reflections on the nature of society in this book, which is specifically “about what technology is enabling us to do to ourselves.” The author readily acknowledges technology’s extraordinary benefits, but he also concisely raises provocative questions about its negative aspects: “What is seen generally as ‘progress’—and which of course, economically speaking, was exactly that—was far from positive for many individuals. For them, the changes constituted a profound and altogether lamentable disruption of traditional patterns of life and behavior.” Every blessing that technology promises comes with an attendant curse, he notes; for example, tech advances have dramatically improved efficiency, but this “necessarily reduces the robustness and resilience of markets” by making them “too efficient” and less able to handle the unexpected, such as the recent pandemic; advances are also “devoid of compassion,” he asserts, as gains in efficiency surely result in massive job loss. Moreover, the tech industry tends toward monopolistic hegemony; the “history of the computing industry,” he notes, “is a succession of antitrust cases.” Raduchel’s impressive analysis goes even deeper than this, exploring the ways in which social interaction, the consumption of media, and even the nature of problem-solving have been deeply transformed by the proliferation of technology. This book is not merely a lament, however—the author also ably navigates a “path to sanity,” showing ways in which the growing excesses of technology can be chastened by targeted taxation, although these recommendations seem unequal to the radical emergence of a “New Technology State.” Still, Raduchel furnishes a critique of the latter that’s as thoughtful as it is rigorous.

A valuable contribution to an important debate about the consequences of technological progress.