"Taylor is the Marshall McLuhan or the Neil Postman of our new digital economy, the lonely voice raising urgent questions we need to answer together . . . If The People's Platform doesn't spark the conversation about the kind of democracy and culture we deserve, then we'll deserve the one we get."―NY1 News' The Book Reader The Internet has been hailed as an unprecedented democratizing force, a place where all can participate equally. But how true is this claim? In a seminal dismantling of techno-utopian visions, The People's Platform argues that the Internet in fact amplifies real-world inequities at least as much as it ameliorates them. Online, just as off-line, attention and influence largely accrue to those who already have plenty of both. A handful of giant companies remain the gatekeepers, while the worst habits of the old media model―the pressure to seek easy celebrity, to be quick and sensational above all―have proliferated in the ad-driven system. We can do better, Astra Taylor insists. The online world does offer a unique opportunity, but a democratic culture that supports work of lasting value will not spring up from technology alone. If we want the Internet to truly be a people's platform, we will have to make it so. “Taylor's critique hits hard . . . The People's Platform should be taken as a challenge by the new media that have long claimed to be improving on the old order.” ― Tim Wu, The New York Times Book Review “Taylor is the Marshall McLuhan or the Neil Postman of our new digital economy, the lonely voice raising urgent questions we need to answer together . . . If The People's Platform doesn't spark the conversation about the kind of democracy and culture we deserve, then we'll deserve the one we get.” ― NY1 News' The Book Reader “Taylor's smart and nuanced overview of the new media landscape is the best I've recently read and an excellent summary of the mess we're in . . . After reading Taylor's brisk and lucid survey, there's no denying that in online media, the market is falling short.” ― The Boston Globe “Do you use the Internet? Then you have to read Astra Taylor's The People's Platform , one of the most important books of the year.” ― Flavorwire “Taylor makes a thorough case that the technological advances we've been told constitute progress--that anyone can start a blog, that we can easily keep up with our friends (and frenemies) on Facebook, that Twitter can foment democratic revolution -- are actually masking and, in some cases, exacerbating social ills that have long plagued our society... Compelling and well argued.” ― Los Angeles Times “A bracing expression of intelligent outrage--with the manifesto vibe of No Logo and the prescience of Silent Spring . By delivering a streetwise economic analysis of our technological reality, Taylor leaves her reader feeling at once charged and newly aware of being duped.... A smart and needful reminder that we sacrifice our systems of knowledge and communication to corporate interests at our great peril. More importantly, it reminds us that there is no single destiny for us; that we can, and must, engineer more than machines--we must engineer modes of use.” ― Globe and Mail (Canada) “In her excellent new book The People's Platform , Astra Taylor thinks through issues of money and power in the age of the Internet with clarity, nuance, and wit. (The book is fun to read, even as it terrifies you about the future of culture and of the economy.).” ― The Awl “Meticulously details how work, education, and the public sphere have been eroded.” ― National Post (Canada) “We need books like this. Astra Taylor is a talented documentary-maker who was dismayed by the way her work was appropriated and pirated online. But instead of fuming silently in her studio, she set out to seek an understanding of the paradoxical world that the merging of cyberspace and meatspace has produced. What she finds is a world which is, on the one hand, hooked on an evangelical narrative about the liberating, empowering, enlightening, democratising power of information technology while, on the other, being increasingly dominated and controlled by the corporations that have effectively captured the technology.... The People's Platform will be an invaluable primer for anyone seeking to understand why our networked world isn't all that it is cracked up to be.” ― The Observer (UK) “A thoughtful corrective about the nature of a medium that has promoted itself as the great equalizer. Taylor delves deep into a world often assumed incomprehensible to anyone but the archetypal techno-geek. She expertly surveys a broad range of research and opinion, and her conclusions will shake the complacency of anyone who thinks that their computer's firewalls will protect personal privacy and keep them free of the hidden corporate hand surreptitiously shaping their search results.” ― Quill & Quire (Canada) “A phenomenally important book... The People's Platform