Preface;
Prologue: What Is Progress?;
1 Control over Technology;
2 Canal Vision;
3 Power to Persuade;
4 Cultivating Misery;
5 A Middling Sort of Revolution;
6 Casualties of Progress;
7 The Contested Path;
8 Digital Damage;
9 Artificial Struggle;
10 Democracy Breaks;
11 Redirecting Technology;
Bibliographic Essay;
References;
Acknowledgments;
Image Cedi;
Index.

Throughout history, technological change - whether in the form of agricultural improvements in the Middle Ages, the Industrial Revolution, or today's artificial intelligence - has been viewed as a main driver of prosperity, working in the public interest. The reality, though, is that technology is shaped by what powerful people want and believe, generating riches, social respect, cultural prominence, and further political voice for those already powerful. For most of the rest of us, there is the illusion of progress.
Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson debunk modern techno-optimism through a dazzling, original account of how technological choices have changed the course of history. From vivid stories of how the economic surplus of the Middle Ages was appropriated by an ecclesiastical elite to build cathedrals while the peasants starved, to the making of vast fortunes from digital technologies today as millions are pushed towards poverty, we see how the path of technology is determined and who influences its trajectory.