What Tech Calls Governing

Elon Musk’s much-maligned Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is just the tip of the iceberg. In recent years, Silicon Valley has seized power in the USA. Meta, Palantir and co. now decide who makes the rules and regulations, and indeed who governs. The government bodies and agencies are riddled with minions of the tech billionaires. Energy policy is now carried out almost exclusively for the crypto industry and AI start-ups. And the anti-woke agenda of these titans of tech is directly transcribed by Trump into executive orders.

In What Tech Calls Governing, Adrian Daub takes the reader into backroom investor meetings and university lecture halls, fertility clinics and BDSM basements to explore what domination means to these corporations and their leaders. They have become our de facto government. But do they even understand what governing is?

»There are so many scintillating aperçus in Daub’s book that I gave up underlining.« Virginia Heffernan, The New York Times on What Tech Calls Thinking

»A systematic indictment of the cult of personality and mythmaking of Silicon Valley from a humanities perspective.« Shelf Awareness on What Tech Calls Thinking

»Readers who worry that a discussion of ideas by an academic must involve a hard slog will be pleasantly surprised . . . Delightful proof that getting rich does not make you a deep thinker« Kirkus on What Tech Calls Thinking

»[A] blistering takedown . . . Daub’s mix of humor, righteous anger, and intellectual rigor appeals. This provocative takedown of Big Tech hits the mark.« Publishers Weekly on What Tech Calls Thinking