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Red Emma’s

Astra Taylor presents "The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age"

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Saturday, September 27th 2014

3:00 pm

The Radical Bookfair Pavilion at the Baltimore Book Festival

The Internet has been hailed as an unprecedented democratizing force, a place where everyone can be heard and all can participate equally. But how true is this claim? In a seminal dismantling of techno-utopian visions, The People’s Platformargues that for all that we “tweet” and “like” and “share,” the Internet in fact reflects and amplifies real-world inequities at least as much as it ameliorates them. Online, just as off-line, attention and influence largely accrue to those who already have plenty of both. What we have seen so far, Astra Taylor says, has been not a revolution but a rearrangement. Although Silicon Valley tycoons have eclipsed Hollywood moguls, a handful of giants like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook remain the gatekeepers. And the worst habits of the old media model—the pressure to seek easy celebrity, to be quick and sensational above all—have proliferated on the web, where “aggregating” the work of others is the surest way to attract eyeballs and ad revenue. When culture is “free,” creative work has diminishing value and advertising fuels the system. The new order looks suspiciously like the old one. We can do better, Taylor insists. The online world does offer a unique opportunity, but a democratic culture that supports diverse voices and work of lasting value will not spring up from technology alone. If we want the Internet to truly be a people’s platform, we will have to make it so.

“Taylor’s critique hits hard... The People’s Platform should be taken as a challenge by the new media that have long claimed to be improving on the old order.” —Tim Wu, The New York Times Book Review

“Essential... In this idealistic—yet rigorous and clear-eyed—argument, Taylor takes on crucial contradictions... She is the Marshall McLuhan or the Neil Postman of our new digital economy, the lonely voice raising urgent questions we need to answer together, or else surrender our choices to Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon.... If The People’s Platform doesn’t spark the conversation about the kind of democracy and culture we deserve, then we’ll deserve the one we get.” —NY1 News’ The Book Reader

“Taylor’s smart and nuanced overview of the new media landscape is the best I’ve recently read and an excellent summary of the mess we’re in…. After reading Taylor’s brisk and lucid survey, there’s no denying that in online media, the market is falling short.” —The Boston Globe

“Taylor makes a thorough case that the technological advances we’ve been told constitute progress—that anyone can start a blog, that we can easily keep up with our friends (and frenemies) on Facebook, that Twitter can foment democratic revolution — are actually masking and, in some cases, exacerbating social ills that have long plagued our society… Compelling and well argued.” —Los Angeles Times

“Do you use the Internet? Then you have to read Astra Taylor’s The People’s Platform, one of the most important books of the year…. Taylor is a clear-eyed writer and a provocative thinker, covering the shifting grounds of how the Internet changes and affects today’s culture, from journalism to music. It makes you very wary about having a Facebook page.” —Flavorwire

“A bracing expression of intelligent outrage—with the manifesto vibe of No Logoand the prescience of Silent Spring. By delivering a streetwise economic analysis of our technological reality, Taylor leaves her reader feeling at once charged and newly aware of being duped…. A smart and needful reminder that we sacrifice our systems of knowledge and communication to corporate interests at our great peril. More importantly, it reminds us that there is no single destiny for us; that we can, and must, engineer more than machines—we must engineer modes of use.” —Globe and Mail (Canada)

“In her excellent new book The People’s Platform, Astra Taylor thinks through issues of money and power in the age of the Internet with clarity, nuance, and wit. (The book is fun to read, even as it terrifies you about the future of culture and of the economy.).” —The Awl

“Meticulously details how work, education, and the public sphere have been eroded.” —National Post (Canada)

“We need books like this. Astra Taylor is a talented documentary-maker who was dismayed by the way her work was appropriated and pirated online. But instead of fuming silently in her studio, she set out to seek an understanding of the paradoxical world that the merging of cyberspace and meatspace has produced. What she finds is a world which is, on the one hand, hooked on an evangelical narrative about the liberating, empowering, enlightening, democratising power of information technology while, on the other, being increasingly dominated and controlled by the corporations that have effectively captured the technology....The People’s Platform will be an invaluable primer for anyone seeking to understand why our networked world isn’t all that it is cracked up to be.” —The Observer (UK)

“A thoughtful corrective about the nature of a medium that has promoted itself as the great equalizer. Taylor delves deep into a world often assumed incomprehensible to anyone but the archetypal techno-geek. She expertly surveys a broad range of research and opinion, and her conclusions will shake the complacency of anyone who thinks that their computer’s firewalls will protect personal privacy and keep them free of the hidden corporate hand surreptitiously shaping their search results.” —Quill & Quire (Canada)

“A phenomenally important book… The People’s Platform isn’t easy to stomach—and that’s because it presents plenty of devastating truths….The People’s Platform is nothing short of a clear-headed gut-check, but Taylor’s message is deceptively simple: That technology is a tool, not a solution. And even if technology has boundless democratizing potential, at current, it hasn’t levelled inequalities.” —Fast Forward Weekly (Canada)

“With compelling force and manifest-like style, writer and documentary filmmaker Taylor lays out one of the smartest—and most self-evident—arguments about the nature and effect of technology in our digital age…. Taylor’s provocative book has the power to help shape discussions about the role of technology in our world.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“The Internet is often lauded as an open, democratic marketplace of ideas and goods in which anyone can thrive. In her sweeping critique, documentary filmmaker Taylor challenges this notion, arguing that networked technology has allowed for greater concentration of power and has reduced transparency. Her well-researched, unsettling, and occasionally downright harrowing book explores the consolidation of popularity; the stubborn digital divide; copyright and piracy; and the pervasive power of advertising…. This provocative populist manifesto on an utterly timely subject deserves a wide audience among policymakers and consumers alike.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“One of the more incisive voices among the multitudes delivering their visions of what the Internet is and might become.... [A] well-defined examination of media culture... Not to be skimmed. A cogent and genuine argument for the true democratization of online culture.” —Kirkus Reviews

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