Against Platforms

One of Inside Hook’s “10 Books You Should Be Reading This January”
One of The Next Big Idea Book Club’s “Hightly Anicipated Books of 2025”
Included on Paris Marx’s Disconnected “Critical Tech Reading List for Early 2025”
One of The Saturday Evening Post’s “Six New Books You Can Resolve to Read in 2025”

“The value of this book is in debunking self-serving claims of digital technology… . An unsparing exposé of how digital platforms stifle personal and collective efficacy.” - Kirkus Reviews

”…what makes Pepi’s book invaluable at the outset of 2025 is its clear reframing of the tools that got us here, and the bogus ideals that led us to trust them as fundamentally neutral.” - Miles Klee for Rolling Stone

“Mike Pepi shows how we can embrace the promise of technology in humanity’s service without getting swept away into the utopianism of the tech bros or the cynically proffered fantasies of venture capitalists. Yes, we can transcend our love-hate relationship with the net.”
—Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now

“Against Platforms is a searing critique of the platforms that hold our culture, politics, media—and lives—in an increasingly tight stranglehold. Mike Pepi makes a passionate argument against Silicon Valley’s utopian vision, and offers hope that technology can still be deployed in our best interests. This fascinating book is a timely and meticulous examination of a supremely important topic.”
—Peter Ward, author of The Price of Immortality: The Race to Live Forever

Mike Pepi is a technologist and author who has written widely about the intersection between culture and the Internet. An art critic and theorist, he self-identifies as part of the “tech left” - digital natives who want to reshape technology as a force for progressive good. His writing has been published in Spike, Frieze, e-flux, and other venues.

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