It’s all the same formula, after all, whether driven by deep learning or the newest A.I. By small companies or large ones. American firms or Chinese. Amid Silicon Valley retrenchment or growth. Political backlash toward tech or political embrace. It is the ruthless maximizing of attention, governed by blinkered tech-manifesto ideologies rooted mostly in greed and hubris, if it is governed at all. Our worst biases and impulses activated many times beyond their baseline. Our basest instincts, which we have worked over eons to contain under the seal of civilization, suddenly amplified and distorted at world-altering scales. Billions of individuals pulled a few notches toward tribalism, aggression, and distrust, the consequences visible at every tier of public and private life. All so that a few companies—and the self-congratulating tech elite who sit atop them—might enrich themselves at our expense.