There’s no doubt about it. The internet age has arrived and digital technology has taken over our lives whether we like it or not. Instead of ushering in a new age of enlightenment, James Bridle in New Dark Age examines the ways in which our technology is taking us into a renewed medieval era of ignorance and corruption. If you think it’s too soon to become pessimistic about the effects of the internet, you’d be surprised at how much evidence Bridle has collected to demonstrating its detriment ro our world.
This book does not get off to a great start. The introductory essay introduces several themes that carry through the entire book. The main theme is the metaphor of the Dark Cloud of Unknowing, a phrase introduced by a medieval theologian who claimed there is such a cloud fixed between humanity and God, making it impossible for people to understand the deity and his ways. Bridle introduces this metaphor to explain how the computer screens that are usually in front of our faces are a dark cloud that prevents us from seeing what digital technology is doing. The device that is closest to us is the one that prevents us from seeing beyond our own noses. While the introduction isn’t necessarily a poor piece of writing, Bridle could have emphasized this Dark Cloud metaphor a little more as it is the thread that ties all the chapters together. Or at least it’s supposed to. This doesn’t become clear until about three chapters or so into the book.
The opening chapters give a brief history of computing and its relation to technology. Your average person seems to think that a computer is something you use to watch videos of cute animals, look up free pornography, or argue with people who don’t know what they’re talking about over things they don’t understand. The vast majority of those arguments are about politics and if you’re arguing about them on the internet, it’s a strong sign that you haven’t got a clue as to what’s really going on. But I digress. The point is that most people don’t understand that “computation” means to do math. So a computer is a machine that does math, or at least that’s what they were a century ago. Computers were designed by the military to compute probabilities of weather conditions. If the military could predict the weather, then they could more effectively conduct combat operations. Later, technicians realized they could use computers to analyze data about things like traffic, human behavior, and other scientific things. From the beginning, computing technology was developed for the purposes of predicting the future and asserting control over it. Despite what you may believe, those are still the primary purposes of computer technology today. That’s what data mining is all about, the surveillance of you to make predictions and subtly nudge you in the direction the technocrats in Silicon Valley want you to go in.
These historical chapters are somewhat interesting even if they are a bit incomplete. But it isn’t obvious from the start how they fit into the scheme of the book. This starts to become more clear in the chapter on the environment and how the permafrost in Svalbard is melting. As the permafrost melts, we begin to see how different parts of nature work together to form a network of interdependent entities that rely on each other for the stability of the planet. Then Bridle takes a risky narrative leap into comparing this natural network, now under severe threat from global warming, to the vast neural network we call the internet. From there he demonstrates how internet usage is driving an exponential increase in energy consumption, increasing the burning of fossil fuels for electricity, and becoming the leading cause of global warming in our times. Your cell phone and laptop are leaving a bigger carbon footprint than your car. Now the Dark Cloud of Unknowing metaphor emerges into clarity.
Although it takes a while to get going, this book takes on greater meaning as it progresses. The rest of it examines different ways in which the internet causes people to exist in a state of ignorance. One problem he brings up is science. New scientific discoveries are on the decline and there has also been a sharp increase in retracted scientific studies. One reason Bridle cites is that researchers have almost entirely abandoned the use of using models for studies. Instead they use large data sets as a substitute. This method has proven to be faulty, especially because data technicians do not actually understand what computer codes do once they are set to use. Algorithms can be written, but once set into motion, nobody really knows what they do or how they arrive at conclusions. The result has been less effective scientific studies that are riddled with errors, miscalculations, and misinformation. We suffer from this because in the real world this means lower quality medical care and the inability to solve complex problems related to things like global warming.
Other problems addressed by Bridle include the tendency people have to believe anything they see on a computer screen thereby causing them to disbelieve information they encounter offline, stock market flash crashes that result from bots being used to trade on the stock market, internet surveillance and data mining, the massive accumulation of junk data that is useless in large data sets, and the spread of disinformation and fake news coming from troll farms in Eastern Europe and Russia. The book ends with a chapter on ElsaGate, a term coined after the publication of this book. This is a scandal that happened when YouTube Kids became infected with disturbing violent and sexual content disguised as children’s entertainment that resulted in advertisers removing their ads from YouTube in protest after a public outcry. Although the ElsaGate content was inherently disturbing, Bridle makes the case that what is even worse is never knowing who or what is on the other side of the screen. The internet is so anonymous that we can never know who is posting these things or what their true intentions are. This is the menacing Great Cloud of Unknowing that we face every time we look at our screens.
James Bridle lays out his case clearly and precisely. He doesn’t leave much room for interpretation in these straight forward essays. To his credit, the writing is never pedantic or dry. Despite getting off to a weak start, it finishes by being accessible, clear, and thought provoking without sacrificing depth or nuance. Although New Dark Age is a thoroughly grim assessment of how the internet is harming our world, it isn’t entirely without hope. If we are entering into a new medieval period of history, just remember that the Middle Ages were followed by the Enlightenment and the Renaissance. Providing the human race survives long enough to get through these wicked times, there may be cause for celebration in the distant future.
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