Superbloom

I approached *Superbloom* expecting another tired screed about screen addiction, but Carr delivers a surgical critique of how digital platforms have hijacked the idea of free speech. His argument isn’t about isolation or distraction—it’s about power. The moment Carr dismantles the myth that ‘more voices’ equal ‘better democracy’ by tracing how YouTube’s algorithm privileges engagement over substance, I was hooked. His chapter on the ‘attention economy’ as a feudal system, where platforms tax our cognitive labor, is devastating precisely because it’s so obvious in hindsight. Jonathan Todd Ross nails this material. His voice has the cadence of a podcast host who’s done his homework but never drowns in jargon, and he nails the tonal shifts—mocking tech gurus with a smirk in his voice one minute, dead-serious when quoting internal Facebook emails the next. My only nitpick: the audiobook’s pacing drags slightly in the middle section where Carr recycles some arguments from his earlier works (*The Shallows*, *Utopia Is Creepy*). The production quality is top-tier, though—no distracting breath sounds or clipping, just a clean, intimate sound that makes you feel like Ross is in the room with you, mid-rant. Would I recommend this to someone who just wants ‘tech criticism’? No. But if you’re the kind of listener who gets a rush from dissecting how Facebook’s ‘civic engagement’ teams secretly suppress dissent, or how Twitter’s ‘free speech absolutist’ rhetoric is a Trojan horse for ad revenue? *Superbloom* is your vice into a deeper, uglier truth.