Virtually Lost: Young Americans in the Digital Technocracy

by Garry Robson

This book examines the connections between the psycho-social difficulties and challenges faced by children and younger people in their online lives; the structure, character, and motivations of the corporate system ‘behind’ the screen; and the possibility that the digital technostructure may come to form the backbone of a new post-democratic system of technocratic governance.

Much of the originality of this book lies in its blending of subjects that are not often combined, thereby offering a fresh ‘generation studies’; the philosophy of technology; the history of the idea of technocracy; the technologically enhanced merger of corporate・governmental power in the U.S. system; the society-shaping goals and capabilities of the big tax-exempt American foundations over the last hundred years; the elite ‘superclass’ gaming of formally constituted transnational and global institutions; and the way the United Nations-centred SDG・ESG system is itself developing in the direction of a technocratic system of economic and population management.

The book will appeal to readers interested in relationships between our contemporary global power elite, the structures it has created and processes it has set in motion, and how these affect young people whose development is already being over-determined by the activities of the big Silicon Valley entities and their associates.

246 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 16, 2023

Reviews

[Adam Zmarzlinski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once in a while, a great book comes along that uproots one's perceptions of what is happening in the world culturally, socially, and politically. Garry Robson's 'Virtually Lost: Young Americans in the Digital Technocracy' is one such book, which stands along with the likes of Ellul's 'The Technological Society' and Burnham's 'The Management Revolution.' Robson begins the work with a dissection of 'Big Nihilism,' a profit-driven ideology that hopes to depress its followers only to relive them of it via blaming everyone for their own melancholy, which, in turn, draws them into idle consumption of digital information. The intricacy of 'Virtually Lost' is that it not only outlines the process of this consumption, but also contextualizes it in the history of its goal: technocracy. Robson analyzes such philosophers as Comte, Heidegger, and Bacon, and leads the reader along to likes of the World Economic Forum, who, as an organization, have embodied the will of social engineering for the survival of the species, all through the need for total and complete control. By taking a deep dive into the corporate capture of the environmental movement, Robson is able to overlay the current corporate capture of education onto it, providing the reader with two intricate examples of dehumanizing Mankind for ideological and economic gain by groups of elites focused on capturing as much of the world's resources as possible to enter a post-human, data-mind, and dystopian existence. Through a degenerative and anti-human education system, various technocratic groups and power hungry individuals are preparing today's children to become tomorrow's slave-consumers. To call 'Virtually Lost' an eye-opening book is an understatement; it is a well written, well researched, and well intentioned piece of scholarship that must be read by anyone who is concerned with the world today and where it is headed.