THE INFORMATION TRADE

Alexis Wichowski's brilliant THE INFORMATION TRADE examines the rise of the tech giants and their dangerous influence on our lives. There have been plenty of books in this space, but Wichowski brings a unique perspective based on her experience over the past two decades working at the intersection of technology, media, and government at the State Department and the United Nations.

In January 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced to universal acclaim the iPhone, one of the greatest godsends of the digital era: a keyboard-less, internet-enabled, do-everything device that fit in your pocket. The launch of the iPhone may very well have been our last mass-magical tech moment, a breakthrough the entire world celebrated and welcomed.

This was before tech got scary.

In this timely and provocative book about our new tech-based reality, political insider and tech expert Alexis Wichowski considers the unchecked rise of tech giants like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Tesla - what she calls "net states" - and their unavoidable influence in our lives. Rivaling nation states in power and capital, today's net states are reaching into our physical world, inserting digital services into our lived environments in ways both unseen and, at times, unknown to us. They are transforming the way the world works, putting our rights up for grabs, from personal privacy to national security.

Written for the tech-savvy and tech-phobic alike, The Information Trade explores what happens when we give up our personal freedom and individual autonomy in exchange for an easy, plugged-in existence - and shows what we can do to control our relationship with net states before they irreversibly alter our future.

ALEXIS WICHOWSKI is press secretary and senior advisor for communications at the Department of Veteran Services, and an adjunct professor of technology, media and communications at Columbia University. A widely recognized technology expert, Wichowski spent the last two decades working at the intersection of technology, media, and government at the State Department and the United Nations. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, TechCrunch, Foreign Affairs, and WIRED, which published her viral piece, "Net States Rule the World: Ignore Them At Your Peril."