Zed: A Novel

"Let’s start with the fiction because, for a general audience, that is a very intuitive way to get into the topic. The novel I’ve chosen is very philosophical. It’s called Zed and it’s by Joanna Kavenna . I’m not sure if the author is a philosopher but if she’s not, she’s very philosophical. It’s a funny novel, that’s one of its virtues. But it’s very concerning at the same time. It’s about a big tech dystopia in which a company called Beetle has gained a lot of power and is led by a narcissistic CEO. It’s about how close this corporation becomes with the security services. What started as nudging—a notification that pushes you to stand up when you’ve been sitting down for a long time or to eat the right kinds of food—becomes seriously oppressive. It’s about how digital technologies can interact with society in a way that invites questions about what is fake and what is real. When you start experiencing reality through avatars, for instance, and through reports by companies, there are a lot of questions about whether this information can be trusted. The author plays with this duality of what is fake and what is real and also with self-fulfilling prophecies. How do we know what technology is doing? How do we check when there’s a mistake? How much transparency do people have? In this case, the technology starts to develop glitches. Of course, the company always tries to explain them away. One of the ways in which they explain the glitches away is by creating very obfuscating language. There’s a case in which somebody gets killed by a drone and the company brands it as ‘suicide by drone.’ It’s a great novel. It’s powerful."