Brian Merchant – författare

Longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the YearThe most urgent story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley but two hundred years ago in rural England, when workers known as the Luddites rose up rather than starve at the hands of factory owners who were using automated machines to erase their livelihoods.The Luddites organized guerrilla raids to smash those machines-on punishment of death-and won the support of Lord Byron, enraged the Prince Regent, and inspired the birth of science fiction. This all-but-forgotten class struggle brought nineteenth-century England to its knees.Today, technology imperils millions of jobs, robots are crowding factory floors, and artificial intelligence will soon pervade every aspect of our economy. How will this change the way we live? And what can we do about it?The answers lie in Blood in the Machine. Brian Merchant intertwines a lucid examination of our current age with the story of the Luddites, showing how automation changed our world-and is shaping our future.

Assembling a remarkable roster of writers, Terraform has established itself by publishing short fiction seemingly ripped from tomorrow’s headlines, speculative fiction about the very near future. Over the last six years, as science fiction itself has achieved a new kind of mainstream credibility and the media landscape has transformed entirely, Terraform has blazed an unexpected path that has seen short stories go viral and given fiction an unparalleled urgency and relevance.Drawing from established luminaries like Bruce Sterling and Cory Doctorow, rising stars, and surprising newcomers, Terraform stories are marked by their convincing engagement with the world that we just might live in, putting our most existential issues into startling dramatic context. Edited by Brian Merchant and Claire L. Evans, and divided here into three categories - Watch/Worlds/Burn - these stories take on surveillance (Watch), artificial intelligence (Worlds), and climate collapse (Burn).

The secret history of the invention that changed everything and became the most profitable product in the world.Odds are that as you read this, an iPhone is within reach. But before Steve Jobs introduced us to 'the one device', as he called it, a mobile phone was merely what you used to make calls on the go.How did the iPhone transform our world and turn Apple into the most valuable company ever? Veteran technology journalist Brian Merchant reveals the inside story you won't hear from Cupertino - based on his exclusive interviews with the engineers, inventors and developers who guided every stage of the iPhone's creation.This deep dive takes you from inside 1 Infinite Loop to nineteenth-century France to WWII America, from the driest place on earth to a Kenyan pit of toxic e-waste, and even deep inside Shenzhen's notorious 'suicide factories'. It's a first-hand look at how the cutting-edge tech that makes the world work - touch screens, motion trackers and even AI - made its way into our pockets.The One Device is a road map for design and engineering genius, an anthropology of the modern age and an unprecedented view into one of the most secretive companies in history. This is the untold account, ten years in the making, of the device that changed everything.