According to two recent books, many people today believe in the Internet the way that the denizens of the Age of Faith believed in God, or that many on the left once believed in Marxism: as the exclusive source of universal personal and political salvation and the basic organizing principle of history. Varieties of this twenty-first century faith can be found in the most disparate places. While the geek elite of Silicon Valley are its natural constituency, other converts include young Egyptians who took part in the 2011 uprising, free-market libertarians, members of the Obama administration, “hacktivists,” open government activists, and a growing tribe of calorie-counting “self-trackers.”
And according to some prophet in the wilderness, the signs are already there of people losing faith in this newest quasi-religion.
November 14, 2013 @ 4:43 pm
Damn, Damian. A fascinating and utterly terrifying pair of books reviewed at the site. The second book sounds particularly terrifying!