Book Notes: Platform Capitalism by Nick Srnicek

If you fell into a coma in 1978 and only woke up today or if you’ve lived in the depths of the taiga and emerged out of it 15 seconds ago, I have great news for you. A guy called Nick Srnicek wrote a book that will explain, with a wealth of fascinating detail, everything you need to know about such things as Facebook, Google, Amazon, and even Uber.

You will learn that Amazon has a lot of warehouses, Facebook gets most of its profits from selling ads, and Uber is this fascinating thing that benefits from having more drivers AND more riders. Cool, huh? Who could have known. And Google? Guess what, you can search for information in it for free. Shocking stuff.

The single thing in this book that’s new for those of us who haven’t been lost in the tundra is Srnicek’s conclusion that, in order to counteract the monopolizing tendencies of Google, the state should build its own Google that will “belong to the people” but won’t spy on them. After reading about that brilliant plan, I was almost ready to go straight back to the tundra because I had no idea anybody took the “start your own Twitter” quip seriously.

In short, if saying the excruciatingly, tragically, embarrassingly obvious were an Olympic sport, Mr Srnicek would be a gold medalist.

P.S. If even this review generates no interest, I really give up. Nobody could have made anything as soporific as this book this much fun.