The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity

A concise yet century-spanning exploration of the power of platforms, what the future of capitalism will look like, and how to build economies that provide equality and lasting prosperity. In every society, there has been an essential platform—a central marketplace—where people come to buy, sell, and make their living. While each culture and era are distinct, all have such a platform to serve as the beating heart of the economy. Over most of human history, these platforms have been public and physical: city centers, ports, shopping streets, and stock markets. Today, however, these arenas are more sophisticated, largely privatized, and virtual: they are digital, accessible anywhere, and anchored by the Internet itself. The way these platforms operate determines how the economy works, who it benefits and fails, and how society functions. Now, Tim Wu—the preeminent legal scholar who coined the phrase “net neutrality”—explores what these platforms tell us about our worlds, and why it is so crucial that they are fair and equal. Platform Capitalism is a sweeping look into the systems we have used for centuries—from the ancient city square to the computer operating system—and reveals what our economies, societies, and life itself will look like in the future.

About the Author :
TIM WU is Julius Silver Professor of Law, Science and Technology at Columbia Law School. He served as special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy under the Biden administration, worked on competition policy in the Obama White House and the Federal Trade Commission, and served as senior enforcement counsel at the New York Office of the Attorney General. The author of The Master Switch and The Attention Merchants, he lives in New York City.

Review :
“Tim Wu’s The Age of Extraction is a must-read. This is a book for anyone—from senator to student—who seeks to understand our digital economy and why we need common sense rules of the road. Wu shows us how to protect consumers, workers, small businesses, and even our democracy from dominant platforms that have inserted themselves into nearly every aspect of our lives.” —Senator Amy Klobuchar “The magic of Tim Wu’s The Age of Extraction is its simplicity. Wu deftly breaks down one of the greatest challenges of our age—the unaccountable power of tech platforms—into such digestible pieces that the solutions for what to do become dead obvious. Essential reading for anyone looking for the recipe to rebalance the vast inequality in our society and to create a thriving economy that works for everyone.” —Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI “An intelligent and useful guide to a dispiriting present. . . . Wu has been writing critically about information technologies and monopolies for some time now. The Age of Extraction can be read as part of a trilogy that began with The Master Switch (2010) and The Attention Merchants (2016). His little book The Curse of Bigness (2018) warned about the dangers of ballooning corporate power. (Wu helped the Biden administration craft its antitrust policies.) Reality has since caught up to a future he has long warned about.” —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review “A must-read.” —Diane Coyle, Financial Times “Large tech companies are set to be the main beneficiaries of a new economy based on data and artificial intelligence. But neither the lopsided present of tech nor the future direction of technology is our destiny. Tim Wu's readable, passionate call is for a fairer economy where the benefits of AI can be for all of us, and he proposes principles, laws, and regulations for how to achieve this.” —Daren Acemoglu, author of Why Nations Fail “The paradox of the platform: without middlemen, we’d all be stuck, but those same middlemen are forever working to declare themselves to be our bosses. Wu’s characteristically insightful book cuts to the core of these world-consuming, usurping enshittifiers, and tells us how to stop them.” —Cory Doctorow, author of Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It “The Age of Extraction is remarkably astute and timely. Wu brilliantly analyzes platform power with great clarity, insight, and moral force, laying out the material stakes for people's lives as well as a roadmap for achieving broad prosperity and economic fairness. A vital book for these troubled times.” —Lina Khan, Former Chair, U.S. Federal Trade Commission “Tim Wu’s The Age of Extraction is a how-to book on how we can achieve liberty once again. Wu describes why so much in our society feels unbalanced, that the convenience and scale of platforms masks a hidden creeping power over our lives and communities. But he also shows how platforms in one form or another have always been part of human society, and the key is to govern them properly.” —Matt Stoller, author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy “Big tech is rapidly consolidating its economic power, according to this unsettling study from legal scholar Wu… [This book shows] how the monopolistic, extractive logic of the internet economy is invading the economy at large as more industries adopt (or are targeted by) new technologies. Examples include the housing market and, most startlingly, the medical industry, which is undergoing a wave of concentration under private equity firms that have implemented onerous new ‘practice platforms’ for doctors. Wu asserts that these industries’ capitulations to tech are canaries in the coal mine, signaling an emergent ‘platform capitalism’ that threatens to create a two-tiered economy with extractive platforms on top and everyone else below. Wu (the original coiner of ‘net neutrality’) outlines some canny legal means to avoid this bleak future. It’s an urgent wake-up call.” —Publishers Weekly, starred “An engaging argument for anti-monopolization. Recommended for readers interested in the economics of technology.” —Library Journal