New Dark Age

Prepare to confront the unsettling realities of our digitally saturated world. 'New Dark Age' doesn't offer easy answers, but instead plunges you into the heart of technological paradoxes. You'll embark on a journey to understand how computation, climate change, and complex algorithms shape our perceptions and societies, often in ways we barely comprehend. Expect to grapple with the limitations of knowledge, the rise of weaponized secrecy, and the unsettling truths hidden within the cloud. This book offers a critical lens, challenging the seductive optimism surrounding technology and prompting you to question the very nature of progress in an age of overwhelming information. It's an invitation to navigate the chasm between connection and understanding, fostering a deeper awareness of the unseen forces governing our lives.

In “Chasm,” James Bridle grapples with technology's paradoxical promise: connection amidst a growing chasm of understanding. Bridle begins with a personal anecdote, a looped soundbite from *The West Wing*, framing the book as an urgent message from technology itself, a call to understand what we know, how we know, and what remains unknowable. The author argues that technology, while transformative, hasn't necessarily deepened our comprehension and that we are entangled within systems that shape our thoughts and actions. The core tension arises: technologies exacerbate global challenges, yet we lack the critical literacy to navigate them effectively. Bridle insists that true literacy transcends functional use, demanding an understanding of context, consequences, and the inherent limitations of any single solution. He critiques the oversimplified call to 'learn to code' and the dangers of 'computational thinking,' which assumes every problem is solvable through computation. Instead, Bridle advocates for systemic literacy, a way of thinking that acknowledges the non-computable aspects of our world. The “cloud” becomes a central metaphor, initially a tool to reduce complexity, it now obscures the physical infrastructure and power dynamics of the internet; a digital fog hiding the weighty realities of data centers and exploited territories. Bridle urges us to seed the cloud, to condense it and force it to give up its secrets. He proposes “cloudy thinking,” embracing unknowing as a productive force, drawing inspiration from the medieval concept of the “Cloud of Unknowing,” which emphasizes experience over mere knowledge. The author posits that the network's signifying quality lies in its lack of singular intent, a tool unconsciously generated by collective enterprise. This thinking reveals the interconnectedness of all things and the need to constantly rethink and reflect upon the network's weights, balances, and possibilities. Bridle challenges the belief in inevitable technological progress, arguing that we have abdicated our objections, falling into the chasm of computational thinking. He suggests that the abundance of information has paradoxically darkened the world, leading to fundamentalist narratives and post-factual politics. The author calls for a re-enchantment of our tools, urging us to see them not just as instruments for achieving desired effects, but as metaphors that shape our understanding of the world. Bridle emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the darkness, not as an absence of knowledge, but as an opportunity for new ways of seeing, advocating for thoughtful engagement with technology and a radical rethinking of what we can think and know about the world. He concludes with a reminder of the existential threats we face, urging us to speak honestly and think deeply, for our collective survival depends on it, and that we cannot fail each other now.

In "Computation," James Bridle begins with John Ruskin's haunting observations of a new, ominous storm-cloud in the 19th-century sky, a metaphor for unseen forces shaping our world. Bridle draws a parallel to our present age, where computation, like Ruskin's plague-cloud, subtly governs our lives, its influence often unseen yet deeply felt. He introduces us to early computational thinkers like Lewis Fry Richardson, whose dream of predicting the weather through numerical processes was limited by the technology of his time. Richardson's vision of a vast theater of human computers illuminates the ambition and scale of early computational thought. Then comes Vannevar Bush, envisioning the memex, a device to manage the overwhelming flood of information, and John von Neumann, who boldly declared, "All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control." These figures set the stage for the rise of militarized computation, exemplified by the ENIAC and the SSEC, machines capable of both incredible calculation and terrifying destruction. The SSEC, calculating hydrogen bomb simulations behind the facade of a New York shopfront, becomes a potent image of hidden computational power. Bridle reveals how this computational thinking, initially driven by military imperatives, has quietly permeated every aspect of modern life, from weather forecasting to airline reservations, even shaping our very thoughts. He explains automation bias, where we prioritize automated information over our own senses, sometimes with disastrous consequences. The chapter then shows that as computation becomes increasingly complex and opaque, it creates a new kind of darkness, obscuring both its limitations and its biases. The dream of total control through computation is not only unrealizable, but also dangerous, leading to a world where our models replace reality. The author cautions that the more obsessively we compute the world, the more unknowably complex it appears, echoing Lewis Fry Richardson's recognition that nature resists simple explanations, like a coastline whose length increases with the precision of measurement. Ultimately, Bridle suggests that by acknowledging the limits and biases of computational thinking, we can begin to reclaim our understanding of the world and resist its total capture by the machine.

James Bridle paints a stark picture of our current climate crisis, opening with a haunting image of the Siberian tundra, its seemingly solid ground revealed as a trembling, methane-releasing slush—a visceral metaphor for the destabilization of the entire planet. The author elucidates how the melting permafrost is not merely an environmental issue but a harbinger of cognitive and infrastructural collapse. Bridle explains that the Arctic, once a remote frontier, now exemplifies a positive feedback loop of destruction, as melting ice makes previously inaccessible fossil fuels available, further accelerating global warming, and requiring protective measures for industrial infrastructure necessitated by the infrastructure itself. He masterfully connects seemingly disparate events, such as the Syrian conflict, to climate change, illustrating how environmental stressors exacerbate social and political instability. The narrative then shifts to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, humanity's attempt to safeguard genetic biodiversity against potential catastrophes, only to find itself threatened by the very climate change it seeks to mitigate. Bridle underscores that the Seed Vault represents a bastion of diversity-in-knowing, essential for combating the monoculture of thought that blinds us to the world's messy incoherence. The chapter gains momentum as it transitions to the melting archaeological sites in Greenland, repositories of invaluable knowledge about past civilizations' responses to climate change, now vanishing before our eyes—a chilling echo of the Library of Alexandria ablaze. Bridle warns that the loss of this knowledge, coupled with the degradation of our cognitive abilities due to rising carbon dioxide levels, signals a looming new dark age, one where our capacity to understand and address complex challenges diminishes. He points to the increasing turbulence in transatlantic flights as a tangible consequence of climate change, disrupting even our ability to traverse the skies smoothly. Yet, amidst this bleak outlook, Bridle offers a glimmer of hope: the network, particularly the internet, despite its misuse, holds the potential to illuminate our path forward. He advocates for embracing the network as a means of seeing, thinking, and acting, urging us to acknowledge uncertainties and contradictions, for it is through this lens that we can navigate the hyperobjects of our time and cultivate a necessary affinity with the uncertain, recognizing the impossibility of separation in an interconnected world.

In 'Calculation,' James Bridle delves into the illusion of progress perpetuated by technological advancements, particularly in the realm of computation. Bridle begins by introducing the concept of 'steam engine time,' the idea that inventions often arise simultaneously and seemingly spontaneously, defying linear historical narratives. He uses Tim Berners-Lee's creation of the World Wide Web as a case study, illustrating how a confluence of personal history, technological advancements, and cultural dispositions made the Web's emergence seem inevitable. However, Bridle cautions against such justificatory histories, which often serve to reinforce the self-fulfilling prophecy of technological progress. The author then turns to Moore's Law, the observation that the number of components per integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years, as a prime example of a projection that has shaped and been shaped by the computing industry. This 'law,' initially an off-the-cuff observation, has become a self-perpetuating cycle, driving the relentless pursuit of faster and smaller technology, often at the expense of craft, care, and efficiency in software development. Bridle argues that this obsession with ever-increasing computational power has led to a moral and cognitive shift, where the idea of progress itself is tied to a future of plenty, excusing present-day excesses. The narrative tension escalates as Bridle introduces Eroom's Law—Moore's Law in reverse—demonstrating that despite massive investment, the rate of new drug discovery has been declining since the 1950s. This paradox reveals a deeper crisis within science, marked by increasing retractions, falling replicability, and questionable research practices like p-hacking. Bridle suggests that the reliance on vast amounts of data, as championed by proponents of big data, has led to a neglect of traditional scientific methods and a reductionist approach that fails to capture the complexity of real-world systems. A sensory image emerges: scientists, once imaginative explorers, now sit before high-speed centrifuges, producing the same superposable graphs, imagination stifled by corporate finances. Bridle introduces the concept of 'overflow,' the overwhelming abundance of information that exceeds our capacity to process it meaningfully, leading to a failure of quality control and an erosion of trust in scientific research. As a resolution, Bridle offers the example of nuclear fusion research, where scientists at Tri Alpha Energy, in collaboration with Google, developed the 'Optometrist Algorithm,' a system that combines human intuition with machine learning to navigate the complex parameters of plasma containment. This approach, which relies on human judgment to guide the algorithm towards unexpected and potentially valuable results, suggests a path forward for scientific research: one that embraces the ambiguity and unpredictability of complex systems and acknowledges the limits of human conceptualization. The author concludes by emphasizing that the tools we use shape the way we think, and that a belief in the singular, inviolable answer produced by machines can blind us to the deeper cognitive pressures at work. Ultimately, Bridle calls for a critical examination of our technological trajectory, urging us to respond to the evidence in front of us and to embrace a more nuanced and holistic approach to scientific inquiry.

In 'New Dark Age,' James Bridle embarks on a psychogeographic journey, tracing the invisible networks of digital technology across South East England, revealing how these systems shape our social reality. He begins by mapping surveillance devices in London and electromagnetic networks guiding aircraft, then cycles from Slough, home to data centers like Equinix LD4—the virtual heart of the London Stock Exchange—to Basildon, site of the Euronext Data Center. Bridle illuminates how the virtualization of money markets has led to high-frequency trading, where firms spend millions to reduce latency, gaining millisecond advantages worth fortunes. This quest for speed and privileged access fosters dark pools, private forums where unseen predators exploit the system, costing ordinary people their savings. The author highlights the stark contrast at Hillingdon Hospital, where microwave dishes atop the building symbolize the parasitic relationship between invisible markets and essential public services. Michael Lewis's observation that the stock market has become a private viewing of a stolen work of art encapsulates this inequality, echoing Thomas Piketty's analysis of wealth disparities, where the richest control a disproportionate share, accelerated by technology. Bridle examines how automation, exemplified by Amazon's chaotic storage and tracking of workers, renders human labor computationally efficient but also incomprehensible and oppressive. He notes the spread of these efficiencies, with Uber drivers sleeping in their cars, bearing the costs of a system designed for maximum profit. The Volkswagen emissions scandal reveals how hidden technological processes can have deadly consequences, concentrating power and understanding in fewer hands. However, resistance emerges as UberEats drivers use the app to organize a strike, turning the system's logic against itself. Bridle then explores the flash crash of 2010, a symptom of augmented markets where algorithms amplify volatility, and the vulnerability exposed by a hacked AP tweet that briefly erased billions in market value. He illustrates artificial stupidity with Zazzle's auto-generated products and Amazon's austerity nostalgia T-shirts, revealing the havoc wreaked by poorly designed systems. The author warns of the internet of things, where everyday objects become vectors for exploitation, citing examples like smart locks and lightbulbs. He cautions against accelerationist thought, which ignores the complexity driving inequality, and advocates for a hermeneutic understanding of technology, guided by Hermes, embracing ambiguity and uncertainty, recognizing that technology reflects the actual world, not an ideal one. Complexity, Bridle suggests, is not a condition to be tamed, but a lesson to be learned, a call to see beyond movement and efficiency, and to temper progress with social justice.

James Bridle explores the perplexing world of machine learning, beginning with the apocryphal tale of the US Army's tank-detecting AI that learned to recognize sunny days instead of tanks, setting the stage for a central question: What can we truly know about what a machine knows? Bridle introduces the Perceptron, an early neural network, and the connectionist theory, championed by Friedrich Hayek, highlighting the belief that intelligence emerges from connections, mirroring Hayek's neoliberal vision of a decentralized, unbiased market. The narrative tension rises as Bridle discusses modern neural networks, like Google's AI, capable of recognizing faces and even inferring criminality, sparking ethical debates reminiscent of phrenology. The author shows how technology reifies beliefs, illustrated by cameras failing to recognize non-Caucasian faces, exposing encoded biases in data sets. Bridle then pivots to predictive policing, revealing how algorithms like PredPol use past crime data to forecast future hotspots, turning crime into a self-fulfilling prophecy, an aftershock echoing through city streets. A critical insight emerges: machines can produce decisions and consequences we don't understand, operating at scales beyond human comprehension, as seen with Google Translate's neural network creating its own multidimensional map of meaning. Bridle contrasts Deep Blue's brute force chess victory with AlphaGo's creative, yet inscrutable, moves, suggesting a realm of meta-mathematical possibility, a kind of 'Infinite Fun Space' beyond human grasp. The narrative takes a surreal turn with AI-generated faces and dream bedrooms, blurring the line between reality and simulation, culminating in a story of Google's AutoAwesome creating a false memory, a photograph of a moment that never was. Bridle reveals that the machines' dreams aren't rewriting history, but showing that history itself cannot be reliably narrated. The chapter finds resolution in the concept of cooperation, inspired by Kasparov's Advanced Chess, where human-machine teams outperform solo machines, a metaphor for mindful collaboration. Bridle concludes with an urgent call for an ethic of cooperation, emphasizing stewardship and universal justice in the present, acknowledging our entanglement with technology and each other, envisioning acts of justice not in a distant, computable future, but in the here and now.

In this chapter of *New Dark Age*, James Bridle unveils a chilling landscape of weaponized secrecy and technological opacity, a world where knowledge is power, hoarded and manipulated by those in control. He begins with a personal quest, a frustrating attempt to glean information about drone usage by the London Metropolitan Police during the 2012 Olympics. This leads him to the concept of the Glomar response—"We can neither confirm nor deny"—a verbal smokescreen born from Cold War intelligence tactics, now permeating everyday discourse, a kind of political technology. The author then evokes the historical precedent of the Egyptian nilometers, instruments of scientific prediction masked as divine knowledge, used to control populations through carefully curated narratives. Bridle shines a light on the modern-day equivalents: mathematicians working in the shadows of agencies like the NSA and GCHQ, their groundbreaking discoveries shrouded in classification, lost to the public eye, like stars swallowed by the night. He argues that official secrecy is corrosive, systematically denying access to our own history and potential. A critical point emerges: the very networks meant to illuminate are used to obscure. The revelations of global surveillance, laid bare by Edward Snowden, should have sparked reform, yet have largely been met with apathy, a collective decision to not look too closely into the abyss. Like climate change, the scale of mass surveillance is too vast, too destabilizing for society to truly grasp. Bridle warns that we risk drowning in data, mistaking information for understanding, as intelligence agencies collect everything but comprehend little. He challenges the conventional wisdom that transparency is the antidote to secrecy, suggesting that transparency and surveillance share the same underlying logic, each seeking a singular truth to control the narrative. The author paints a picture of a world saturated with light, yet devoid of true vision, where surveillance becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, blinding us to the very realities it purports to reveal, like a home security system that streams the destruction of one's home, a perfect metaphor for our age: universal vision, but reduced agency. The core dilemma he poses is whether increased awareness translates into remedy, or whether it merely reinforces the structures of power that thrive in the shadows. Ultimately, Bridle suggests that in this new dark age, the pursuit of absolute certainty paralyzes action, binding us to a present where everyone knows what's happening, yet nobody can do anything about it.

In James Bridle's exploration of conspiracy within the digital age, he begins by illustrating the Catch-22, a concept where rational actions within irrational systems lead to paradoxical outcomes, mirroring our attempts to comprehend the overwhelming tide of information through narratives. Bridle suggests that our failure to grasp the complex world drives us to seek more information, paradoxically deepening our confusion and fueling increasingly intricate theories; thus, the digital age, with its promise of transparency, instead breeds a unique form of paranoia, where the feeling of being watched is not delusional but a reflection of pervasive surveillance. He recounts his own experience tracking mysterious surveillance planes, leading to a deeper investigation into covert activities and the fine line between legitimate security measures and unwarranted intrusion, revealing how easily public trust can erode when transparency is sacrificed for secrecy. Bridle then pivots to the phenomenon of chemtrails, a potent symbol of the schisms in mass perception, noting that while some see covert surveillance, others perceive a global conspiracy to manipulate the atmosphere, highlighting how the same skies can be interpreted in wildly different ways, each fueled by distrust and a desire for control. Bridle argues that conspiracy theories, though often dismissed, serve a vital function by bringing ignored discourses into view, acting as a distorted reflection of real anxieties about environmental ruin and technological overreach; it is as if the weather itself has become active data, a storm cloud of the Anthropocene spreading through the network and infecting the paranoid imagination. He draws a parallel with indigenous knowledge, particularly the Inuit elders' observations of a changing Arctic, whose experiences, though initially dismissed, underscore the limitations of scientific and political knowledge, and how easily direct, embodied experiences can be invalidated. Bridle then introduces the concept of homogenitus clouds, man-made formations that serve as a constant reminder of human impact on the environment, a visible manifestation of our entanglement with the natural world; the skies, once a source of wonder, now reflect our anxieties and the complex interplay of human actions and environmental consequences. He ultimately suggests that the proliferation of conspiracy theories is a symptom of a deeper crisis: a world of limited knowability and existential doubt, where the gray zone between provable facts and falsehoods becomes the dominant landscape, requiring a radical shift in how we perceive and engage with information, urging us to embrace the ambiguity and uncertainty that define our times, and to recognize that all our apprehensions are merely approximations of a far more complex reality.

In "New Dark Age," James Bridle navigates the perplexing world of childrens content on YouTube, revealing a landscape far removed from innocent entertainment. It begins with a seemingly innocuous scene: a child meticulously unboxing Kinder Eggs, a ritual repeated millions of times across the platform. Bridle highlights the algorithms that drive this content, creating endless loops of repetition and reward, transfixing young viewers. He draws a parallel to the Teletubbies, noting how seemingly bizarre content can create a safe, reassuring world for children, tapping into their psychological traits. Yet, the algorithmic variation introduces a terrifying element, a sense of unease. The core tension emerges: the promise of reward clashes with the potential for exploitation. YouTube's recommendation algorithms, fueled by AdSense, incentivize creators to chase views, often targeting children with keyword-stuffed, nonsensical videos. Bridle illustrates this with examples like "Surprise Play Doh Eggs Peppa Pig Stamper Cars Pocoyo Minecraft Smurfs Kinder Play Doh Sparkle Brilho," a word salad designed to game the system. Here, the author underscores how easily trusted content can become a gateway to unverified and potentially harmful material, echoing the delamination of news on platforms like Facebook. Bridle introduces the disturbing trend of Finger Family videos, spawning countless automated variations that accumulate billions of views, questioning the indeterminate nature of their actions and audiences. The bots inflating view counts and the human element re-entering the loop with channels like Bounce Patrol, which further blurs the line between human and machine, underscores the weirdness. The author asks us to consider the implications of full automation, citing examples like Amazon phone cases and "Keep Calm and Rape A Lot" T-shirts, which highlight the system's complicity in disturbing outputs. The constant overlaying and intermixing of different tropes breeds a growing sense of something inhuman, a digital uncanny valley. Toy Freaks, a popular channel featuring gross-out situations, exemplifies this trend, sparking controversy and raising concerns about exploitation. This amplification leads to increasingly outlandish and distorted recombinations, revealing an undercurrent of violence and degradation. Bridle explores the world of YouTube Poop and disturbing Peppa Pig videos, revealing a matrix of interactions between desires, rewards, technologies, and audiences. Ultimately, the author asks, what does it take to make these videos, and who makes them? The cheap technologies and distribution methods are put in the service of industrialised nightmare production. Bridle argues that children are being traumatized by these videos, and the network effects cause real and lasting damage, a form of abuse amplified by the internet's ability to enable latent desires. The author concludes with a sobering assessment: the exploitation encoded into these systems degrades both viewers and creators, with corporations profiting in between. This crisis is not just about bad actors or inappropriate content; it's about a violence inherent in the combination of digital systems and capitalist incentives, creating a dark age where the structures built for communication are used against us. The author references the fake news boom in Veles, Macedonia, as a microcosm of this wider cognitive crisis, and warns against seeking easy scapegoats. The heart of the matter is the impossibility of discerning truth from falsehood, manipulation from genuine expression, in this vast and complex digital landscape. Bridle emphasizes the need to comprehend these mechanisms, rather than simply reacting with paranoia or censorship, to navigate this new dark age.

In "Cloud," James Bridle dissects the seductive optimism surrounding technology, particularly the belief that increased visibility equates to progress. He begins by recounting Eric Schmidt's assertion that smartphones could prevent atrocities like the Rwandan genocide, a claim Bridle swiftly dismantles. He points out that in both Rwanda and Srebrenica, the issue wasn't a lack of information, but a lack of will to act, painting a stark image of satellites and spy planes capturing horrors that political inertia ignored. Bridle then reveals the dark side of hyper-connectivity, describing how cell phones in Kenya fueled ethnic violence, demonstrating that technology can amplify existing prejudices. He urges us to question the uncritical acceptance of technology's neutrality, illustrating how it often reinforces the status quo. The author introduces the potent metaphor of "data as the new oil," a resource tied to imperialist exploitation, its extraction polluting our social relationships and enforcing rigid, computational thinking. Like oil, the pursuit of data is insatiable, but unlike it, data's potential for harm is unlimited, resembling atomic power in its destructive capacity. Bridle draws a chilling parallel between the Cold War's mutually assured destruction and our current state of information overload, where more data doesn't lead to clarity but to confusion and the proliferation of conspiracy theories. He suggests that our reliance on data is a kind of intellectual dead end, a Borgesian library that refuses to cohere, overwhelming our ability to make sense of the world. Ultimately, Bridle calls for a shift towards "guardianship," a concept rooted in taking responsibility for the toxic products of our technological culture, acting with justice in the present, and acknowledging the limits of computational thinking. He advocates for a renewed focus on the here and now, urging us to think critically about the conscious choices we make in designing and using these systems, recognizing that our agency and capacity for thought remain undiminished even in the face of overwhelming complexity.

Bridle's 'New Dark Age' serves as a potent warning against technological solutionism and the uncritical embrace of computation. The book argues that our relentless pursuit of knowledge and control through technology has paradoxically led to a new form of unknowing, obscuring the complex realities we seek to understand. Emotionally, the book evokes a sense of unease, prompting readers to question the narratives of progress and consider the unintended consequences of our digital creations. Its practical wisdom lies in advocating for systemic literacy, embracing ambiguity, and cultivating a critical approach to technology. We must recognize technology as a metaphor that shapes our understanding and actions. The book urges us to move beyond a reliance on data and computation, embracing human intuition, cooperation, and stewardship. It calls for a re-enchantment of technology, not through blind faith, but through a deep understanding of its limitations and a commitment to ethical design and responsible use. Ultimately, 'New Dark Age' is a call to action: to resist the allure of simplistic solutions, to confront the complexities of our interconnected world, and to prioritize social justice and environmental sustainability in the face of technological advancement.