Technology and Society Reading/Discussion - Bangkok

Why do so many people kneel at the altar of technology without asking serious questions about the god they are praying to?

Plenty of us have wondered if the benefits of the various technologies in our lives outweigh the drawbacks, but as a whole, society keeps sprinting into tech adoption without hesitation. Big tech leaders are treated like prophets, and their faithful seem too far too trusting that these novel technologies are worth using daily and that nonbelievers are not worth listening to. It certainly has a religious smell to it, at the very least.

In Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion, and Why it Desperately Needs a Reformation, MIT and Harvard chaplain Greg Epstein analyzes, from a critical and humanist point of view, our modern worship of technology as a religion.

Please join us for the October meeting of the Technology and Society book club as we discuss Tech Agnostic by Greg M. Epstein.

(Note: This is a book club. You should read the book, or have well-developed thoughts related to the book's topic, before attending. )

NOTE: We have hosted at the Starbucks listed in the past, but due to its early closing time, I am still looking for a suitable new venue. I will probably change the venue soon, so keep an eye out for that, but it will be somewhere in central Bangkok not too far from an MRT or BTS station.

Description from Amazon:
An urgently needed exploration of global technology worship, and a measured case for skepticism and agnosticism as a way of life, from the New York Times–bestselling author of Good without God.

Today’s technology has overtaken religion as the chief influence on twenty-first century life and community. In Tech Agnostic, Harvard and MIT’s influential humanist chaplain Greg Epstein explores what it means to be a critical thinker with respect to this new faith. Encouraging readers to reassert their common humanity beyond the seductive sheen of “tech,” this book argues for tech agnosticism—not worship—as a way of life. Without suggesting we return to a mythical pre-tech past, Epstein shows why we must maintain a freethinking critical perspective toward innovation until it proves itself worthy of our faith or not.

Epstein asks probing questions that center humanity at the heart of engineering: Who profits from an uncritical faith in technology? How can we remedy technology’s problems while retaining its benefits? Showing how unbelief has always served humanity, Epstein revisits the historical apostates, skeptics, mystics, Cassandras, heretics, and whistleblowers who embody the tech reformation we desperately need. He argues that we must learn how to collectively demand that technology serve our pursuit of human lives that are deeply worth living.

In our tumultuous era of religious extremism and rampant capitalism, Tech Agnostic offers a new path forward, where we maintain enough critical distance to remember that all that glitters is not gold—nor is it God.

Large tech companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, and Apple influence our choices and select the information we receive on a daily basis. They are some of the world's most valuable and powerful companies, with an ability to steer both behavior and opinion unrivaled in history in both precision and scale. Their arms reach across international boundaries; the tendrils of their influence touch us even in our most private moments.

How did they get to this point, what are the vectors of their power over our societies, and what does all this mean for us, as citizens in a world they dominate?

Tim Wu, author of The Attention Merchants and coiner of the phrase "net neutrality", offers an answer in The Age of Extraction. This surprisingly short book offers a concise answer to pressing and complex questions. Join us for the November meeting of the Technology and Society Reading and Discussion Group, as we read The Age of Extraction by Tim Wu.

(Note: This is a book club. You should read the book, or have well-developed thoughts related to the book's topic, before attending. )

NOTE: We have hosted at the Starbucks listed in the past, but due to its early closing time, I am still looking for a suitable new venue. I will probably change the venue soon, so keep an eye out for that, but it will be somewhere in central Bangkok not too far from an MRT or BTS station.

Book Description from Amazon:
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2025 • Tech platforms manipulate attention, extract wealth, and deepen inequality. In this new book, Tim Wu (The Attention Merchants) explains how we can reclaim control and create a balanced economy that works for everyone.

“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.”—Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI

"It’s not just in your head—your online life is draining your wallet.... [The Age of Extraction is] a sharp and eye-opening introduction to how we arrived at platform capitalism—where no good click goes unmonetized.”—Kirkus Reviews

Our world is dominated by a handful of tech platforms. They provide great conveniences and entertainment, but also stand as some of the most effective instruments of wealth extraction ever invented, seizing immense amounts of money, data, and attention from all of us. An economy driven by digital platforms and AI influence offers the potential to enrich us, and also threatens to marginalize entire industries, widen the wealth gap, and foster a two-class nation. As technology evolves and our markets adapt, can society cultivate a better life for everyone? Is it possible to balance economic growth and egalitarianism, or are we too far gone?

Tim Wu—the preeminent scholar and former White House official who coined the phrase “net neutrality”—explores the rise of platform power and details the risks and rewards of working within such systems. The Age of Extraction tells the story of an Internet that promised widespread wealth and democracy in the 1990s and 2000s, only to create new economic classes and aid the spread of autocracy instead. Wu frames our current moment with lessons from recent history—from generative AI and predictive social data to the antimonopoly and crypto movements—and envisions a future where technological advances can serve the greatest possible good. Concise and hopeful, The Age of Extraction offers consequential proposals for taking back control in order to achieve a better economic balance and prosperity for all.