On the <i>New Dark Age</i> by James Bridle

Abstract

This year AST published The New Dark Age the first ever translation into Russian of James Bridle, contemporary British writer, artist, and computer technology expert. Sprinkling a fascinating narrative with interesting and often frightening facts from various fields and references to philosophy, the author created a convincing and sobering picture of the world in which we live, not even suspecting its ever-growing complexity and inhumanity. Despite the modern trend on cultural literacy, Bridle focuses on our blindness and arrogance regarding pervasive technological systems. Bridle encourages his readers to engage in critical thinking, see the reality for what it is and embrace it in its overwhelming complexity and fragility. Questioning the linearity of progress, he posits that we might have already passed our peak knowledge. It means that ongoing calculations and the resulting additional data only make the world a less understandable place to live in. Instead of an elegant and working picture of the world, we are surrounded by darkness, pervasive chaos under the guise of calculated order. Bridle’s zeal to trace back the hard basis of cyber reality takes him on a journey from the electric cables in the depths of the ocean to the contrails-lined sky. Electricity, unpredictable weather and climate change, the first computers and secret inventions, the works of great mathematicians and stock market crashes, satellite maps, world aviation, Concordes and short-term turbulence, unsuccessful GPS journeys, computer games, social networks and entertainment videos on the Internet, scientific research errors caused by a variety of factors from measuring instrument deficiency to dubious publishing ethics in the modern scientific community, permafrost, history and time machine, biodiversity and plague... Technology is a black box and it clouds our vision. With more data available (and increasingly hard to digest) we are less apt to good decision-making and are likely to be taking a leap of faith in the dark of the black box of omnipresent technologies. Are we standing at the edge of an abyss? In this fascinating read, Bridle invites us to admit and possibly bridge the gap between our understanding of reality and the reality.