The Age of Extraction

How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity

By: Tim Wu

Narrated by: Frits Zernike

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.

Simplistic analysis

This is a simplistic analysis of tech platforms that meanders into a political screed. Not worth the squeeze.

The age of extraction

Cogent and up to date in highlighting the key issues of today’s technological landscape and offering some possible remedies.

Platforms and competition

First, the presentation was excellent: very well read.

It provided very clear and informative descriptions about the early market positions and operations of IBM and the companies that challenged them.

The book provides a clear understanding on the efficacy of anti-trust policy (or the results of the absence of it) and the meaning of ‘platforming’

…and monopolies and how it affects competition and pricing.

This is a well written, well read, and interesting story how the tech industry helped to get us to this very weird moment in history.

Didn’t consider consumer benefits of the platforms nor 401K wealth creation by platforms

Interesting historical analogies & stories to provide context for people to think about modern day tech platforms

Lots of data; no real plan

I never could quite figure out where this book was headed; it was packed with lots of data that the author clearly believes are problematic, and I assumed that in the back half of the book solid and realistic solutions would be presented. By for the most part, that wasn’t the case. Still - several historical nuggets, and I give the author credit for the overall presentation. Just felt like he could have been bolder with solutions.