We say social media corrupted the internet. Wrong. Advertising corrupted the internet; social media just perfected the theft. This chapter traces how your attention was quantified, financialized, and sold to the highest bidder. Read this if you want to know why you feel tired after scrolling for an hour even though you haven’t moved, and why the only thing ‘social’ about social media is that we are all suffering together.

Steve Jobs wouldn’t let his own kids use an iPad. Tim Cook’s nephew is banned from social media. This chapter exposes the ‘Drug Dealer’s Rule’: never consume your own supply. We look at the parenting habits of Silicon Valley executives who send their kids to screen-free schools while selling your kids addiction algorithms. You should read this if you want to know why the people who built the future are terrified of letting their own families live in it.

We are told the internet is a vast, decentralized meritocracy. This chapter reveals it is actually a small company town run by a group of men who fired Elon Musk whilst he was on a plane. We trace the lineage of the ‘PayPal Mafia’—the Apostles who learned that it is cheaper to buy the competition than to build a better product. Read this to understand why every app on your phone leads back to the same table at a restaurant in the year 2000.

The internet was supposed to have a cash register. It’s called HTTP 402, and it’s been sitting in the code for 30 years, gathering dust. This chapter reveals how a single meeting in 1993 doom-spiralled us into a world where ‘Attention’ is the only currency. You should read this if you want to know why you are currently being auctioned off to advertisers 747 times a day, and why ‘Free’ is the most expensive word in the English language

We used to have gods that demanded goat sacrifices. Now we have Tech Emperors who demand your biometric data and your firstborn’s attention span. This introduction sets the stage for the New Testament—the era where technology stopped being a tool you held and became a theology you inhabit. We cover the full scripture: the Genesis of the Internet, the Gospel of the iPhone, the Apocalypse of AI, and the Rapture of Mars. Read this to understand why you are praying to an algorithm that hates you.

We used to own our tools. Now, we just rent the right to touch them. This chapter traces the death of the ‘User’ and the birth of the ‘Consumer’—from the anarchic freedom of the Homebrew Computer Club to the sealed garden of the Macintosh. Read this to understand why the Mac wasn’t a revolution; it was a beautiful prison, and why you technically don’t own the phone you are holding right now.

Meet Thomas Midgley Jr., the Forrest Gump of environmental destruction. He didn’t just invent leaded gasoline; he also invented the chemical that destroys the ozone layer, achieving a ‘double-tap’ on the planet’s atmosphere that would make a Bond villain blush. This chapter traces how one man’s quest to stop an engine from making a knocking sound ended up poisoning every child born between 1925 and 1985. Read this to understand why ‘Innovation’ is sometimes just a fancy word for ‘setting the sky on fire.

Humans are not rational; we are just insecure animals with credit cards. This chapter looks at how advertisers stopped selling products and started selling ‘feelings.’ We show how Freud’s theories were used to convince women that smoking was empowering and men that a coffee cup was a status symbol. Read this to learn why the things you ‘want’ are actually just the things a dead Austrian psychologist predicted you would need to fill the void in your soul.

We didn’t just neglect our children; we professionally outsourced them. This chapter explores how we replaced the parent with the school, and then replaced the school with the iPad. We look at ‘Baumol’s Cost Disease’—the economic reason why televisions get cheaper while childcare gets more expensive. You should read this to learn why you are raising your children on discount dopamine because the market has priced premium oxytocin out of your budget.

Sleep is the final frontier of capitalism for one simple reason: it is the only time you are not consuming ads or producing labour. This chapter traces the history of the ‘War on Rest’—from beating Victorian children awake to selling you ‘Sleep Optimization’ apps today. You should read this if you want to know why your FitBit is just a tiny, digital overseer that gamifies your exhaustion.

Before 1850, if you were hungover on a Saint Monday, it was called ‘culture.’ After 1850, it was called ‘breach of contract.’ This chapter tracks how the Industrial Revolution didn’t just build factories; it redesigned human beings to fit inside them. Read this to understand why you feel guilty for taking a lunch break, and why your boss thinks your desire for sleep is a ‘productivity bottleneck’ that needs debugging.

From the Code of Hammurabi to your Experian credit report, the logic is identical: if the number goes down, you cease to be a person and become an asset to be liquidated. This chapter explores how we replaced human judgment (“He’s having a bad month”) with binary code (“Access Denied”). You should read this if you want to know why a database in Utah has more control over your life than your own mother, and why the ledger is the only god that actually answers prayers (usually with ‘No’).

We like to imagine our ancestors lived in peaceful harmony with nature. The archaeological evidence suggests they were actually clubbing each other to death in a swamp in Kenya. This chapter argues that ‘Peace’ is just a marketing term for the brief pause while we reload. Read this to learn why the ‘Defence Budget’ is just a polite term for ‘Paranoia with a Credit Card,’ and why humanity’s killer app has always been… killing.

For 200,000 years, billionaires didn’t exist for a simple biological reason: you can’t hoard a mammoth. It rots. This chapter explores how the invention of the silo broke the ‘law of rot’ and allowed humans to stack wealth for the first time. Read this to understand why equality died the moment we figured out how to keep dry pasta for more than a week.

You didn’t just sign a contract with your employer; your ancestors signed a biological mortgage with wheat. This chapter argues that civilization is essentially a pyramid scheme where the bottom layer is built on ruined knees and rotting teeth. We look at how humanity traded the freedom of the savannah for the security of the dentist’s chair. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t a fair trade.

Apparently, humans have spent millions of years evolving to run free on the savannah, only to invent a system and technology where we sit in traffic all day to pay for a gym membership to run for hours on a stationery treadmill. This chapter traces the history of the ‘Upgrade Trap’—from the misery of early agriculture, which, Yuval Harari labelled history’s biggest fraud—to the horrors of a Mars colony contract. You should read this to find out exactly how much freedom you lost the moment you clicked ‘I Agree’ without reading the text.

We are destroying Earth with technology, so we must use technology to escape to Mars, a planet that has no air because it lacks technology. This prologue exposes the ‘Mars Paradox’—the idea that the billionaires breaking the planet are the only ones selling tickets to the lifeboat. Read this to learn why your retirement fund is currently invested in a carnival barker’s promise to turn a radioactive desert into a glamping site.

You aren’t failing; you are iterating. This chapter tells the story of Emperor Maximillian, who realized that the only difference between a naked lunatic and a visionary genius is the quality of the press release. We trace the history of the ‘Pivot’—the Silicon Valley art of turning a catastrophe into a feature. Read this to understand why the most valuable skill in the modern economy isn’t engineering; it is the ability to look a crowd in the eye while wearing nothing but a curtain and call it ‘Premium Content’.