How the autonomous digital forces jolting our lives - as uncontrollable as the weather and
plate tectonics - are transforming life society culture and politics. David Auerbach's
exploration of the phenomenon he has identified as the meganet begins with a simple startling
revelation: There is no hand on the tiller of some of the largest global digital forces that
influence our daily lives: from corporate sites such as Facebook Amazon Google YouTube
Instagram and Reddit to the burgeoning metaverse encompassing cryptocurrencies and online
gaming to government systems such as China's Social Credit System and India's Aadhaar. As we
increasingly integrate our society culture and politics within a hyper-networked fabric
Auerbach explains how the interactions of billions of people with unfathomably large online
networks have produced a new sort of beast: ever-changing systems that operate beyond the
control of the individuals companies and governments that created them. Meganets Auerbach
explains have a life of their own actively resisting attempts to control them as they
accumulate data and produce spontaneous unexpected social groups and uprisings that could not
have even existed twenty years ago. And they constantly modify themselves in response to user
behavior resulting in collectively authored algorithms none of us intend or control. These
enormous invisible organisms exerting great force on our lives are the new minds of the world
increasingly commandeering our daily lives and inner realities. Auerbach's analysis of these
gargantuan opaque digital forces yield important insights such as: - The conventional wisdom
that the Googles and Facebook of this world are tightly run algorithmic entities is a myth. No
one is really in control. - The efforts at reform - to get lies and misinformation off meganets
- run into a brick wall because the companies and executives who run them are trapped by the
persistent evolving and opaque systems they have created. - Bitcoin and other
cryptocurrencies are uncontrollable and their embrace by elite financial institutions threatens
the entire economy - We are asking the wrong questions in assuming that if only the Facebooks
of this world could be better regulated or broken up that they would be better more ethical
citizens - Why questions such as making algorithms fair and bias-free and whether AI can be a
tool for good or evil are wrong and misinformed Auerbach then comes full circle showing that
while we cannot ultimately control meganets we can tame them through the counterintuitive
measures he describes in detail.
