Although both shocks were indicators of a deep malaise in liberal democracy, they were widely – but wrongly – attributed to social media. They included: the power to transform the public sphere by the algorithmic curation of our information feeds the ability to silence the most powerful politician in the western world by suddenly banning him from company platforms and the power effectively to render people invisible by delisting them from Google searches.ĭemocracy’s long slumber ended in 2016 when two political earthquakes shook the political world – the Brexit vote in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the US.
But future historians will also note that some powers acquired by the tech giants of the early 21st century seemed genuinely novel. Some of the powers the companies wielded were relatively familiar, basically just contemporary manifestations of older kinds of industrial power: monopolistic domination of certain markets. And while the activities of extractive capitalism came ultimately to threaten the planet, those of its surveillance counterpart have turned into a threat to our democracy.
Whereas the standard form appropriated and plundered the Earth’s natural resources, this new “ surveillance capitalism” appropriated human resources in the shape of comprehensive records of users’ behaviour, which were algorithmically translated into detailed profiles that could be sold to others. Two of these companies even invented a new variant of extractive capitalism. They logged and tracked everything we did online – every email, tweet, blog, photograph and social media post we sent, every “like” we registered, every website we visited, every Google search we made, every product we ordered online, every place we visited, which groups we belonged to and who our closest friends were.Īnd that was just for starters. They will wonder at how a small number of these organisations, which came to be called “tech giants” (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft), acquired, and began to wield, extraordinary powers. The are other Black Friday discounts from Walmart to take advantage of this week, too, such as grabbing the extreme sports open-world sandbox Rider’s Republic for just $25.W hen historians look back on this period, one of the things that they will find remarkable is that for a quarter of a century, the governments of western democracies slept peacefully while some of the most powerful (and profitable) corporations in history emerged and grew, without let or hindrance, at exponential speeds. Grabbing the latest yearly sports games for $60 at launch can be a gamble, but $26 for each game makes this sale an excellent way to add the latest versions of each franchise to your library. The move to EA’s Frostbite engine gives NHL 22 a visual bump over previous iterations, however. As noted in our review roundup for NHL 22, most critics are high on the hockey, but low on the lack of innovation. NHL 22, on the other hand, was received less favorably, averaging a 71 on Metacritic.
NBA 2K22 is sitting at a 78 on Metacritic, and the general response is the gameplay is solid but held back by technical issues and microtransactions for some of the modes. We didn’t review NBA 2K22 or NHL 22, but both games racked up decent reviews from critics this year. Sure, FIFA 22 doesn’t change much compared to FIFA 21, and we aren’t thrilled with the microtransactions in Ultimate Team mode, but the footy is fun, matches are well-paced, and the player animations look great thanks to EA’s HyperMotion tech.Īs for Madden NFL 22, we gave it a 7 in our review and called it “a recent high mark for the series,” thanks to better and more varied AI teams, new features like Gameday Atmosphere and Gameday Momentum, and an overhauled Franchise mode that makes the downtime between games more interesting than last year’s outing.
The discount applies to the PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch versions (if available) of each game, and lasts until November 28.įIFA 22 is arguably the highlight of the sale, which scored 8 in our review earlier this year. NHL 22 can be purchased for the same price on Amazon. A group of annual sports titles are just $26 at Walmart as part of the retailer’s Black Friday week sale, including FIFA 22, Madden NFL 22, and NBA 2K22.