Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations

In this compilation from the past decade, Carr (The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains) presents a selection of nearly 80 posts from his Rough Type blog, several magazine articles and book excerpts, and an original essay on transhumanism. It is easy to trace his technoskepticism through these writings and the warnings that as technology is being sold with utopian zeal, people are often blinded to the business interests that are quietly reshaping our culture and values. Carr's wry take on new technologies from Wikipedia to Google Glass, and his critiques of tech writers' and CEOs' frequent hyperbole may seem curmudgeonly, but they never descend into neo-Luddite territory. He enjoys deflating grand claims and reinforces the idea that the boons of technology come with costs as well. He urges readers to consider that much of what technology offers is only the illusion of control and that human agency and choice may in fact be diminished by such inventions. Though these same themes are explored in his other books and on his blog, it is convenient to have Carr's curated writings in one volume.