The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity

by Tim Wu

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Tim Wu, the man who first coined the phrase “net neutrality,” details the dangerous power imbalance in the tech industry today and offers steps for a more prosperous future.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593321249
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/04/2025
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Tim Wu is Julius Silver Professor of Law, Science and Technology at Columbia Law School. He worked in the White House as special assistant to the President for technology and competition policy. The author of The Master Switch and The Attention Merchants, he lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

“Tim Wu’s The Age of Extraction is a must-read. This is a book for anyone—from senator to student—who seeks to understand our digital economy and why we need common sense rules of the road. Wu shows us how to protect consumers, workers, small businesses, and even our democracy from dominant platforms that have inserted themselves into nearly every aspect of our lives.” —Senator Amy Klobuchar

“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 for anyone looking for the recipe to rebalance the vast inequality in our society and to create a thriving economy that works for everyone.” —Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI

“An intelligent and useful guide to a dispiriting present. . . . Wu has been writing critically about information technologies and monopolies for some time now. The Age of Extraction can be read as part of a trilogy that began with The Master Switch (2010) and The Attention Merchants (2016). His little book The Curse of Bigness (2018) warned about the dangers of ballooning corporate power. (Wu helped the Biden administration craft its antitrust policies.) Reality has since caught up to a future he has long warned about.” —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review

“A must-read.” —Diane Coyle, Financial Times

“Large tech companies are set to be the main beneficiaries of a new economy based on data and artificial intelligence. But neither the lopsided present of tech nor the future direction of technology is our destiny. Tim Wu's readable, passionate call is for a fairer economy where the benefits of AI can be for all of us, and he proposes principles, laws, and regulations for how to achieve this.” —Daren Acemoglu, author of Why Nations Fail

“The paradox of the platform: without middlemen, we’d all be stuck, but those same middlemen are forever working to declare themselves to be our bosses. Wu’s characteristically insightful book cuts to the core of these world-consuming, usurping enshittifiers, and tells us how to stop them.” —Cory Doctorow, author of Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

“The Age of Extraction is remarkably astute and timely. Wu brilliantly analyzes platform power with great clarity, insight, and moral force, laying out the material stakes for people's lives as well as a roadmap for achieving broad prosperity and economic fairness. A vital book for these troubled times.” —Lina Khan, Former Chair, U.S. Federal Trade Commission

“Tim Wu’s The Age of Extraction is a how-to book on how we can achieve liberty once again. Wu describes why so much in our society feels unbalanced, that the convenience and scale of platforms masks a hidden creeping power over our lives and communities. But he also shows how platforms in one form or another have always been part of human society, and the key is to govern them properly.” —Matt Stoller, author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy

“Big tech is rapidly consolidating its economic power, according to this unsettling study from legal scholar Wu… [This book shows] how the monopolistic, extractive logic of the internet economy is invading the economy at large as more industries adopt (or are targeted by) new technologies. Examples include the housing market and, most startlingly, the medical industry, which is undergoing a wave of concentration under private equity firms that have implemented onerous new ‘practice platforms’ for doctors. Wu asserts that these industries’ capitulations to tech are canaries in the coal mine, signaling an emergent ‘platform capitalism’ that threatens to create a two-tiered economy with extractive platforms on top and everyone else below. Wu (the original coiner of ‘net neutrality’) outlines some canny legal means to avoid this bleak future. It’s an urgent wake-up call.” —Publishers Weekly, starred

“An engaging argument for anti-monopolization. Recommended for readers interested in the economics of technology.” —Library Journal

From the Publisher

2025-05-30
It’s not just in your head—your online life is draining your wallet.

Have you noticed yourself spending more time immersed in social media, web searches, and purchasing? Wu, an award-winning author, professor at Columbia University, and policy advocate, knows that is no accident. Technology has transformed our marketplaces into ubiquitous, addicting platforms, designed to capture our attention and extract wealth. “Wealth extraction” means taking money from everyone, on all sides of a transaction, raking in maximum profits for platform owners. Descended from the ancient city square, platforms including Amazon, Google, Meta, and corporations serving medical and housing needs are engineered to be both essential and unavoidable, extracting hidden fees. Wu takes a hard look at the intertwined political, economic, and technological histories that led to the rise of dominant platforms and their techniques to ensnare us and keep us engaged and buying. Platform owners understand that resisting convenience is very difficult and leverage this to keep us online. Early internet developers aimed to empower everyone, but large computer companies became monopolies, requiring the creation of anti-monopolistic policies to modulate their power. Another alarming theme is the rise of ChatGPT and large language models. To evolve, they require large quantities of data generated by human interactions with platforms—another form of extraction. Though he points to the dangers and unfairness of economic inequality, Wu doesn’t paint an entirely gloomy picture but does encourage us to recognize and take control back from platforms practicing excessive wealth extraction. Wu covers a lot of territory in this brisk, 30,000-foot view of platforms entwined with our economic lives. The message is to look up from our screens and be cognizant of the extractive environment that surrounds us. Plentiful endnotes and an index will guide those wishing to dig deeper.

A sharp and eye-opening introduction to how we arrived at platform capitalism—where no good click goes unmonetized.

Kirkus Reviews