The People Vs Tech

Have you ever wondered whether technology is improving society—or quietly dismantling the foundations that hold it together? In The People vs Tech, Jamie Bartlett argues that our digital revolution is eroding the six pillars that make democracy work: active citizens, shared culture, free elections, equality, a competitive economy, and trust in authority. He contends that the power and speed of technological change have outpaced democracy’s ability to manage it, setting up a collision course between digital progress and political stability.

Bartlett isn’t a Luddite; he’s a realist who’s spent years studying technology’s social impact as a researcher at Demos. His central claim is stark: if democracy doesn’t evolve, it will be replaced—by a techno-authoritarian future run not by tyrants with armies, but by engineers with algorithms. The very systems that promised connectivity and empowerment now threaten to dilute free will, polarize communities, manipulate elections, and concentrate economic and political power in the hands of a digital elite.

From Free Connection to Constant Control

The book opens with the paradox of our digital age. Social media and big data were meant to democratize information and connect the world. But instead, they’ve created what Bartlett calls a “new panopticon”—a vast surveillance and manipulation system where every interaction is tracked, analyzed, and used to predict our behavior. Drawing on early psychology and Silicon Valley’s obsession with “hacking” the human mind, Bartlett argues that platforms like Facebook and Google have turned freedom-loving citizens into predictable data sets. He likens modern dataism to the 20th-century behavioral science movement—an experiment in shaping desire and control that now spans billions of people.

Technology, he says, isn’t neutral. It rewires how people think and feel, which in turn transforms politics. The dopamine-driven design of apps keeps us endlessly scrolling and swiping—what Tristan Harris calls “the attention economy.” This addictive behavior doesn’t just waste time; it undermines autonomy and moral maturity, because citizens ceaselessly trade conscious thought for artificial stimulation.

Six Pillars at Risk

Bartlett organizes his argument around six democratic pillars that technology is weakening. In chapters rich with real-world examples, he explains how constant connectivity fuels tribalism (“The Global Village”), how big data corrupts elections (“Software Wars”), and how automation threatens the middle class (“Driverless Democracy”). The second half examines the rise of monopolies (“The Everything Monopoly”) and movements like crypto-anarchy (“Crypto-Anarchy”) that seek total liberty by dismantling state power entirely. Each trend, in isolation, seems manageable. Together, they form an ecosystem hostile to democratic balance.

For example, artificial intelligence promises efficiency but risks stratifying society into a “barbell economy” of elites and service workers, erasing the middle class—the group history shows is essential for stable democracy. Meanwhile, blockchain, cryptocurrency, and radical encryption challenge governments’ ability to tax, regulate, or enforce laws. Bartlett notes with irony that technology meant to protect privacy could end up destroying the collective institutions that guarantee rights, replacing them with chaotic systems of self-interest.

When Technology Governs Morality

Underlying everything is a philosophical struggle: can we remain moral agents when machines predict and optimize our decisions? Bartlett compares modern algorithms to Jeremy Bentham’s long-lost dream of a “felicific calculus”—a formula to measure right and wrong. Big data makes Bentham’s fantasy plausible again, but with devastating implications. When machines are consistently “better” than humans at diagnosis, strategy, or judgment, citizens may surrender moral choice to algorithms. Bartlett warns this moral singularity—the moment we delegate ethics to AI—would mark democracy’s true death knell.

The Coming Political Reckoning

Bartlett ultimately sees two possible futures. One is utopian: an age of universal basic income, jobless prosperity, and liberation from drudgery. The other is dystopian: deep inequality, digital manipulation, and techno-authoritarian governance. The most likely path, he believes, lies between them—a society strained by inequality and disillusioned with democracy, where citizens trade freedom for efficiency. In this world, algorithms become instruments of control rather than tools of progress. His reminder is haunting: the next great threat to democracy won’t come from generals or ideologues, but from coders who claim to serve humanity while concentrating power beyond accountability.

Throughout The People vs Tech, Bartlett balances vivid storytelling—such as the Starsky Robotics truck “Rosebud” driving autonomously down the Florida highway—with political analysis and philosophical depth. The book’s question is both urgent and personal: as technology rewrites everything from our economy to our emotions, can democracy rewrite itself fast enough to survive?

In the end, Bartlett doesn’t call for smashing the machines. He calls for redesigning democracy to harness technology while defending freedom. He warns that unless we act, liberal democracy—the imperfect but resilient system built over centuries—will quietly vanish, replaced by a glittering but hollow technocracy that governs not through violence, but through code.

Imagine living inside a transparent dome where every click, scroll, and conversation is observed. Bartlett calls this our new panopticon—a digital surveillance environment created not by governments but by the advertising giants of Silicon Valley. It’s an era where attention equals currency and privacy is traded for convenience.

Inside the Attention Economy

Social media platforms, Bartlett explains, evolved from hacker optimism into psychological laboratories. Facebook’s “like” button, designed to trigger dopamine loops, ensures users remain hooked. Algorithms test millions of variations—fonts, tones, colors—to maximize clicks. This isn’t accidental; it’s inherited from 20th-century behaviorism. He connects modern dataism to John Watson’s early psychological theories, where behavior could be scientifically predicted and controlled. Now, billions unknowingly participate in that same experiment daily.

Bartlett gives chilling examples: tech firms partnering with data brokers like Acxiom to gather thousands of data points on individuals—from race and politics to health concerns. These insights feed algorithms that know users better than they know themselves. When predictive machines begin optimizing human decision-making, autonomy erodes. (Similar to Yuval Noah Harari’s warning in Homo Deus that data may soon replace free will as our supreme moral authority.)

Life Under Surveillance

This panopticon doesn’t rely on fear—it relies on participation. Every app, wearable device, and smart home gadget expands the circle of observation. Bartlett compares it to Bentham’s prison design, where inmates behaved because they might be watched. Online, we act out acceptable personas to avoid backlash. The constant awareness of visibility leads to shrinking self-expression and moral timidity, undermining the democratic need for independent, risk-taking citizens.

Manipulation by Algorithm

Bartlett describes personalized advertising as “invisible persuasion.” Algorithms not only predict our preferences but shape them—learning when we’re vulnerable, angry, or bored. Political ads, tailored at emotional peaks, manipulate choices without conscious awareness. He asks whether technological nudges differ fundamentally from coercion, since true freedom requires awareness of influence. Cathy O’Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction (which Bartlett cites) reveals similar consequences: opaque algorithms reproducing social biases while appearing objective.

The Moral Singularity

Beyond manipulation lies dependence. As artificial intelligence surpasses human judgment in tasks like medical diagnosis or policy optimization, Bartlett predicts a “moral singularity”—where humans defer ethical reasoning to machines. He envisions citizens consulting a “Felicific Calculus 2.0” for decisions, eliminating the uncertainty democracy requires. When algorithms start guiding not just consumption but conscience, democratic responsibility collapses. Machines may become more moral, but people less human.

Bartlett’s lesson is personal: guard your attention and moral agency as the new frontiers of freedom. Democracy’s survival depends not only on rights and institutions, but on your capacity to think freely in a world that constantly thinks for you.

When Marshall McLuhan predicted the rise of the “global village,” he imagined a world connected by shared information. Bartlett argues the opposite has happened: connectivity has fractured society into warring tribes. The internet encourages emotion over reason, partisanship over compromise, and identity politics over shared citizenship.

From Connection to Division

Social media, Bartlett writes, fulfills McLuhan’s darker prophecy—creating emotional feedback loops where individuals cluster around belief reinforcement rather than truth. Within infinite connection, people filter out the unfamiliar. Algorithms amplify outrage because anger drives engagement. Bartlett calls this “retribalization.” Every grievance finds a home online, transforming loosely shared complaints into politically charged identities—from Black Lives Matter to the alt-right.

The Psychology of the Crowd

Modern digital tribes obey what 19th-century observers like Charles Mackay and Gustave Le Bon noticed: crowds think irrationally. Bartlett connects this to Daniel Kahneman’s “system one” thinking—fast, emotional, instinctive reasoning that dominates online spaces. Political debate becomes instant and visceral. The result is “system one democracy,” led by populists who master the emotional tempo of platforms. Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, and other figures exemplify leaders who translate digital emotion into political power, using outrage as connection.

Enemies and Purity

In tribal politics, opponents are not rival citizens but immoral enemies. Bartlett lists examples—from Brexit’s cultural divide to Tommy Robinson’s English Defence League—where online framing transforms factual news into moral narratives. As he puts it, “Disagreement turns into impurity.” Toxic disinhibition—the tendency to behave aggressively online—further escalates conflict. This dynamic erodes democratic compromise, the lifeblood of pluralism.

The outcome is predictable: polarization breeds authoritarian craving. Hannah Arendt warned that disoriented masses seek simplicity; Bartlett sees this alive in Trump’s tribe—a cult of belonging amid information chaos. Technology hasn’t made people irrational; it’s industrialized irrationality.

For you, Bartlett’s advice is clear: avoid the seductive comfort of your online tribe. Seek opponents’ best arguments before denouncing them. Democracy cannot survive endless “system one” politics dominated by dopamine and outrage—it requires citizens practiced in patience, empathy, and reason.

Bartlett’s chapter on elections reads like a thriller. In 2016, Donald Trump’s campaign hid in a nondescript San Antonio office called Project Alamo—a data bunker where digital analysts, including Brad Parscale and Theresa Hong, turned Facebook into an electoral weapon. Their techniques exemplify a new democratic reality: campaigns no longer persuade voters through ideas but through algorithms.

Elections as Information Warfare

Bartlett recounts how Cambridge Analytica’s team used data points—5,000 per American—to create “universes” of persuadable voters based on personality and consumer habits. Ads were tested, optimized, and deployed in thousands of versions daily. Facebook and Google embedded staff within the campaign to ensure ads hit maximum efficiency. Trump’s victory margins—just tens of thousands of votes in key states—showed how digital targeting could swing history.

Similar techniques appeared in Brexit’s Vote Leave campaign, guided by Dominic Cummings and AggregateIQ. Bartlett portrays both as expressions of a new digital politics: precision micro-targeting, data integration, and emotional manipulation replacing public debate. He notes that in standard democracy, everyone sees the same messages; now, each citizen inhabits a private reality curated by algorithms.

The End of Shared Reality

Hyper-personalization destroys accountability. Voters can’t verify what others are promised; journalists can’t monitor hidden “dark posts.” Bartlett warns this creates millions of fragmented experiences of democracy, untethered from truth. When combined with foreign manipulation—especially Russian bots and fake news—elections resemble information wars rather than civic rituals.

The Algorithmic Politician

In the long run, Bartlett predicts politics will select leaders optimized for algorithmic flexibility—figures without firm principles but with adaptable messaging. The politician becomes part software, part salesman. The danger is profound: power shifts from those with vision to those with data. Algorithms, not deliberation, decide what people want.

For citizens, the takeaway is sobering. Democracy’s safeguards—transparency, fairness, truth—depend on shared visibility. When every voter receives a unique version of reality, democracy becomes a customized illusion. Bartlett’s warning is simple: whoever owns the data owns the future.

What happens when machines do all the work? Bartlett investigates automation through his visit to Starsky Robotics, a self-driving truck start-up. There, veteran driver Tony Hughes trains AI systems that may soon replace him. This paradox—people teaching machines that will erase their jobs—sets the stage for a deeper question: can democracy survive when the middle class disappears?

From Work to Wealth Concentration

Artificial intelligence will increase productivity dramatically, Bartlett argues, but the benefits will concentrate among a handful of capital owners and skilled technologists. Referencing economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (The Second Machine Age), he shows that technology historically enlarges inequality even as it grows wealth. The “barbell-shaped economy” emerges: lucrative jobs for elite engineers at Facebook or Google and low-paid service work for everyone else—Uber drivers, cleaners, carers. The middle collapses.

Moravec’s Paradox and Future Work

Machines excel at complex reasoning but fail at simple human tasks, a contradiction known as Moravec’s Paradox. Bartlett suggests this will protect some low-skill but non-routine jobs even while destroying many white-collar ones—paralegals, radiologists, accountants. The result isn’t joblessness but polarization, where human creativity and empathy become luxuries in an economy of automation.

Inequality and Democracy

For Bartlett, inequality isn’t just economic—it’s political. Democracies rely on a vibrant middle class that pays taxes, volunteers, and trusts institutions. When wealth pools at the top, social cohesion collapses. He documents the extremes: Silicon Valley, where tech millionaires ride private shuttles past homeless encampments. Bartlett calls this “driverless democracy”—a system where technology speeds ahead, leaving citizens powerless passengers.

His conversations with venture capitalist Sam Altman about universal basic income reveal the tensions within the tech elite itself. Altman sees UBI as salvation; Bartlett calls it illusion—a redistribution scheme funded by companies that evade taxes. Without addressing power concentration, handouts will never restore dignity or equality.

For you, Bartlett’s warning is clear: democracy runs on balance, not extremes. If automation drives society toward digital feudalism, political stability will crumble. The future isn’t jobless—it’s unequal. And inequality, left unchecked, destroys the trust democracy needs to function.

Technology doesn’t just create new markets—it concentrates them. Bartlett unpacks how companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook evolved into unprecedented monopolies that shape not only what people buy but how they think. The digital economy’s architecture naturally favors giants—thanks to network effects, scalability, and access to data.

How Digital Monopolies Form

Once you join a platform, your friends join too, snowballing into exponential growth. Bartlett calls this “winner-takes-most” economics. Google dominates because every search improves its algorithm; Uber because each ride improves its logistics. Competition evaporates. These companies buy challengers—Facebook’s acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram—and use vast resources to hire talent even governments can’t match.

From Economic to Political Domination

Wealth translates into lobbying and influence. Bartlett cites Google’s record-breaking spending on Washington lobbying and its personnel exchanges with government. This fusion of tech and politics blurs accountability. Platforms like Airbnb and Uber can mobilize millions of users via push notifications to pressure regulators—what he calls “digital corporatism.” Corporations now control public opinion as easily as they control pricing.

Cultural Capture

Beyond policy, these firms shape culture. Bartlett references Antonio Gramsci’s concept of “cultural hegemony”: domination through ideas, not coercion. Tech monopolies promote a Californian ideology—a fusion of capitalism and hippie idealism—that paints disruption as liberation. Every app we use spreads this creed: convenience equals progress. Even critics risk being dismissed as Luddites who “don’t get it.”

Compared to oil or rail monopolies, tech giants control not raw materials but human attention. When Google can alter what billions see with a single algorithm change, power transcends economics—it becomes epistemic. Bartlett warns that democracy can survive inequality or corruption, but not epistemic monopoly: when truth itself becomes proprietary.

His conclusion forces accountability back onto readers: every tap or click strengthens these monopolies. Breaking them requires political courage—and cultural resistance to the ideology that disruption is always good. The people, Bartlett insists, must take back tech before tech takes their politics.

If Silicon Valley undermines democracy through power, crypto-anarchists challenge it through liberty. Bartlett travels to Prague’s Institute of Cryptoanarchy—a hub of hackers and libertarians aiming to destroy government control using encryption and blockchain. He treats it as the most radical response yet to digital authoritarianism: the dream of a stateless digital society.

The Rise of Crypto-Anarchy

Bartlett recounts the origins in Timothy C. May’s 1988 Crypto-Anarchist Manifesto, envisioning encryption as the “barbed wire” of digital freedom—tools to secure communication beyond state reach. Public key cryptography made this possible, enabling anonymous transactions and communication. Over decades, these ideas birthed movements like the Cypherpunks and technologies including Bitcoin, Tor, and WikiLeaks.

Freedom vs. Chaos

Bartlett confronts the paradox: while encryption protects individual rights and journalists, it simultaneously weakens states’ ability to enforce law. Darknet markets, ransomware, and tax evasion flourish in anonymity. If money and information become untraceable, governments lose the power to tax, regulate, or prosecute crime—the foundation of democracy itself. Bitcoin’s independence from central authority symbolizes both liberation and instability.

The New Leviathan Problem

Without enforceable sovereignty, Bartlett argues, freedom becomes abstraction. Democracy depends on coercive mechanisms—tax collection, police enforcement—that crypto-anarchy dissolves. The cypherpunks’ faith in code over law leads to moral disengagement; as Bartlett writes, “Crypto-anarchy’s dream of liberty may kill the very system that protects it.” Governments, he notes, will not yield—they’ll respond with draconian punishment and surveillance, as seen in Ross Ulbricht’s life sentence for running Silk Road.

Timothy May’s final prophecy—“crypto will make the world safe for the one percent”—haunts Bartlett’s conclusion. Total technological freedom without political accountability inevitably favors those with power and technical literacy, not ordinary citizens.

Bartlett doesn’t dismiss crypto-anarchy entirely; he honors its vision of privacy and resistance. But he warns: democracy cannot coexist with total digital liberty, because liberty without law ends in plutocracy. Technology can defend rights, but never replace the social contract that grants them meaning.

In Bartlett’s chilling finale, democracy’s fate depends on how societies respond to inequality, polarization, and digital control. He paints two possible endgames: a technocratic utopia or a soft-totalitarian dystopia. Most likely, we will drift somewhere in between—a hybrid world where citizens surrender liberty for efficiency.

Low-Level Equilibrium

Bartlett borrows Francis Fukuyama’s phrase “low-level equilibrium” to describe weakened governments trapped in feedback loops of mistrust and incompetence. Rising inequality and falling tax revenues leave states unable to meet citizens’ demands. Crime, depression, and fragmentation grow, feeding populism. Citizens, disillusioned with democracy’s inefficiency, turn to authoritarian “system one” leaders promising control—mirroring early signs in Poland, Hungary, and authoritarian China.

Tech as an Instrument of Order

He warns of “techno-authoritarianism,” where governments use data and AI to maintain stability through surveillance and prediction. China’s Social Credit System exemplifies this fusion—quantifying trust, behavior, and loyalty into a national algorithmic score. Bartlett foresees Western democracies adopting similar systems in the name of efficiency and safety, gradually normalizing coercion.

The Elite Escapes

Even Silicon Valley’s elite fear their creation. Bartlett interviews Antonio García Martínez, ex-Facebook executive turned survivalist, living on an island stocked with guns and generators. “Hope is a shitty hedge,” Martínez tells him. Wealthy technologists prepare for apocalypse, buying estates in New Zealand. They foresee collapse—not revolution.

Between Scylla and Charybdis

Bartlett ends with a classical metaphor: democracy must navigate between Scylla (inequality and collapse) and Charybdis (authoritarian control). Avoiding both requires reinventing democracy as a dynamic system—adaptive, data-literate, yet rooted in independence and moral judgment. Otherwise, history will archive it beside feudalism and communism: an experiment that failed to evolve.

For readers, Bartlett offers hope—if fragile. Democracy can survive if citizens demand transparency, ethical regulation, and accountability from tech. “The People vs Tech,” he writes, is not a prophecy but a choice. The battle for freedom now unfolds not in parliaments or revolutions, but in lines of code—and in the minds of those who still choose to think.