Exponential

Brought to you by Penguin.

A revelatory guide to how technology is changing the world, from the creator of Exponential View.

We are entering the Exponential Age.

Over the last decade, Azeem Azhar – writer, technologist and creator of the Exponential View platform – has become our leading thinker on how technology is transforming business, politics and society. Now, Azhar offers a holistic way to think about the effects of new tech. Our society, Azhar argues, is afflicted by an ‘exponential gap’ – the gulf between the growing pace of technological change, and our institutions’ struggle to keep up.

Exponential reveals how this exponential gap can explain the most pressing problems of our age. The gulf between traditional businesses and fast-growing digital platforms. The inability of nation states to deal with new forms of cyberwarfare. The polarisation between tech-savvy urban elites and the rest of the population. And the sclerotic response of liberal democracies to fast-moving social problems.

But the exponential gap is not inevitable. Drawing on fields as varied as economics, political science and psychology, Azhar sketches out how we can harness the power of tech to serve our real needs – fostering new forms of politics, innovative ways of working and fresh approaches to national defence.

Exponential technology can become a force for good. This book explains how.