La fattoria degli umani. Come le piattaforme digitali stanno riprogettando la nostra vita

Why, after 2005, has the number of democracies in the world shrunk, distrust in governments grown, newspaper sales collapsed, and mental disorders among teenagers increased? And why have protests and conflicts multiplied across the planet? What is the role of the internet – which exploded during those years thanks to social media and smartphones – in this era of instability? Weaving together current events and research, Enrico Pedemonte explains how digital platforms – controlled by a handful of companies that have become more powerful than states in a world without rules – have invaded our lives, changed our habits, and altered the way we inform ourselves, communicate, and spend our time. The path traced is that of a true ongoing revolution: from the utopias of the 1990s to the hegemony of Google, from the birth of Facebook to the uprisings in Arab countries, from the election of Obama to Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump, from mass disinformation to the crisis of democracy, and finally to the latest, astonishing developments in new models of artificial intelligence that, while fueling hope to solve many of humanity’s problems, also provoke fear and create bubbles of millenarian cultures.