IN The Blind Giant, Nick Harkaway first imagines two extreme futures: a dystopia in which we rot in front of our screens and a fairy tale in which everything is amplified by the glory of technology. He then explodes both, arguing that human nature renders even the shiniest technology a mere tool.
The real question is which aspects of human nature we should use our tools to amplify. He argues that the price of technological utopia for some is the exploitation of others – ruined states where the building blocks of utopia are mined on the cheap. Put bluntly, smartphone…
