The Information Trade

How Big Tech Conquers Countries, Challenges Our Rights, and Transforms Our World

By: Alexis Wichowski

Narrated by: Tia Rider

In this timely, provocative, and ultimately hopeful audiobook, a widely respected government and tech expert reveals how Facebook, Google, Amazon, Tesla, and other tech giants are disrupting the way the world works, and outlines the growing risk they pose to our future if we do not act to contain them.

Today’s major technology companies - Google, Facebook, Amazon, Tesla, and others - wield more power than national governments. Because of their rising influence, Alexis Wichowski, a former press official for the State Department during the Obama administration, has re-branded these major tech companies "net states".

In this comprehensive, engaging, and prescriptive audiobook, she considers their growing and unavoidable influence in our lives, showing in eye-opening detail how these net states are conquering countries, disrupting reality, and jeopardizing our future - and what we can do to regulate and reform the industry before it does irreparable harm to the way we think, how we act, and how we’re governed. Combining original reporting and insights drawn from more than 100 interviews with technology and government insiders, including Microsoft president Brad Smith, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the former Federal Trade Commission chair under President Obama, the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology , and the managing director of Jigsaw - Google's Department of Counterterrorism against extremis and cyber-attacks - The Information Trade explores what happens when we cede our power to them, willingly trading our personal freedom and individual autonomy for an easy, plugged-in existence.

Neither an industry apologist or fearmonger, Wichowski reminds us that we are not helpless victims; we still control our relationship with the technologies and the companies behind them. Most important, she shows us how we can curtail and control net states in practical, actionable ways - and makes urgently clear what’s at stake if we don’t.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2020 Alexis Wichowski (P)2020 HarperAudio

Excellent, balanced analysis about big tech & society

As an AI leader in the tech industry who also writes about related issues myself, I’ve read most major books related to big tech, Internet governance, and the impact of tech (and tech companies) on society.

I do enjoy almost all of them, though often having to tolerate major flaws. Many are hyper-partisan. Most are insightful in some respects but have a major bias or are narrow and miss an important piece of the puzzle. Few dare to venture substantive solutions. The Information Trade improves on all of these.

This book is pro-technology and emphasizes the value of technology in our daily lives. It’s pro-privacy and always focused on what’s best for the user. It’s pro-government and describes the unique and critical role government plays in protecting us.

Ms. Wichowski presents a clear and unique viewpoint that integrates these seemingly inconsistent—but clearly correct—viewpoints into a coherent story that captures the problem with a nuance and constructively positive outlook I haven’t seen anywhere else.

These issues are challenging and I can’t claim to agree with 100% of the basic points, but this is the only book that I find to be fundamentally on the right track. The optimism and constructiveness are a great bonus that make this book a pleasure to read.

The author doesn’t pretend to have every answer, but makes a strong attempt at moving the conversation forward productively.

What would I do differently?

I don’t think Ms. Wichowski clearly identifies the fundamental nature and scope of government, something which admittedly could also lead to disagreement and polarization. Her quotation of framers of the US government and multiple enlightenment thinkers paints a roughly correct perspective without being polarizing.

More crispness here would enable her to go further in delineating the difference between nation-states and the concept she coined, “net states.” And it would better enable sorting out the confusing boundary of where government should be doing more and what companies should indeed have control over—i.e. she could take the lay 10% of the book further and IMO more accurate. But this would come at the cost of risking some of the intense value in the first 90%.

For the scope of raising the problem and doing so in a way almost anyone should be able to learn from without taking offense, this book is wonderful.

Note that this feedback is asking too much from a book. I hope this critique is useful for people to understand what they’re going to get and not get from the book. But for what it’s trying to accomplish and where the bulk of the effort is spent, I am very happy with it exactly the way it is.

This is an easy 5 stars.