World Without Mind

Hear journalist and The Atlantic correspondent Franklin Foer discuss the existential threat of big tech.

In his latest book World Without Mind, Foer offers a profound argument against the utopian posturing of Silicon Valley and the four corporations that effectively govern the digital world: Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook.

As these four gigantic companies have expanded – marketing themselves as champions of individuality and pluralism – their algorithms have pressed us into conformity and laid waste to privacy.

Thus, Foer argues, they have produced an unstable and narrow culture of misinformation, and put us on a path to a world without private contemplation, autonomous thought, or solitary introspection – a world without mind.

Join him for a fascinating discussion tracing the intellectual history of computer science – from the Descartes and the enlightenment to Alan Turing to the hippie origins of today's Silicon Valley – and exploring the dark underpinnings of the corporate ambitions that threaten our private authority over how we intellectually engage with the world.

Tickets – £4