Have you found yourself wondering why the owner of Tesla keeps popping up on political broadcasts around the world? What is driving this seemingly relentless push of AI development? Or whether it’s possible to live an ethical life on the internet? If you’re on a mission to seek answers to these questions, don’t go alone. Take these books to empower, educate, comfort and challenge you on your onward journey: Against Platforms by Mark Pepi (Melville House), Log Off by Katherine Cross (LittlePuss Press), and The Twittering Machine by Richard Seymore (The Indigo Press).

In his new book, Against Platforms: Surviving Digital Utopia, tech and culture writer Mike Pepi explores a dark, lurking ideology underpinning technology right now. He identifies it as ‘techno-utopianism’. With optimistic origins, techno-utopianism explains many of the developments we see happening in the world today. By tracing the history of this ideology back to the 1960s, Pepi shows us it’s basis in libertarianism and the ways it has slowly “colonized our political, cultural and social institutions”.

Pepi explains how this techno-utopian ideology has stretched beyond Silicon Valley and become more glaringly relevant to all of us. Thankfully you don’t need any background or special knowledge in tech to understand Pepi’s argument, as he goes through the core myths of techno-utopianism and explains key concepts with the right balance of technical knowledge and accessible language. He argues what we really need going forward is a critical eye and the knowledge that the future is not set in stone. With each myth and every chapter, he reminds us that “humans are not passive subjects in the existing or presently unfolding history of technology”. A hopeful prospect to hold onto in these times.

Recent months have seen a notable migration from Musk’s Twitter/X, and its no surprise. The Twittering Machine by Richard Seymore dives deep into the dark sides of Twitter (even pre-Musk) and other platforms, specifically looking at the toxic relationship it creates with the personal and the political. Through journalism, psychoanalytic reflection and interviews with users, developers, security experts and others, he investigates how it’s turned users into controlled and incentivised products, negatively challenged our sense of reality, and lured us into an addiction-like reliance. In the words of the Observer, “if you really want to set yourself free you should read a book — preferably this one”.

Wondering where to go from here? The previous two books provide a great basis for understanding digital utopias and the big conversations happening in tech right now. But if you need something for healing our relationship to the digital world and moving forwards, Log Off: Why Posting and Politics (Almost) Never Mix is the perfect book for that. As a PhD candidate in Information Science, Katherine Cross brings her knowledge and empathy to our current dilemmas. The book is both a critique and a tool for evaluating our political lives online. Made even more relevant by this year’s global events, her analysis weaves in personal stories as well as critical analysis to provide a real-life balm for the fractured world in which we live.

Reading Log Off is an important reminder that online social platforms are not effective replacements for communities, political action, or human connection. Cross is realistic in that she doesn’t expect you to finish the book and suddenly delete all of your social media apps. Rather, she provides the perspectives and tools to look at the role of Big Tech, understand our own digital lives better, and find collective solutions together.

It’s been a heck of a journey to get where we are now. I look back on my own early life on the internet and see a glowing optimism that it would solve my problems, help me share my passions with the world and feel more connected. Some days, it still does. But it’s undeniable that there’s something darker and more dangerous behind the insta-sheen. If, like me, you’ve felt out-of-your-depth on the internet lately, or keep asking yourself “why am I still here?”, then pick up a book, read yourself better.

Bonus Book: