Lendle

Machine-readable identity cards are issued to prisoners, workers, and schoolchildren around the world. Tiny ID chips track every car, shirt, and razor blade purchased from every corporate manufacturer in America. Chips track—and control—humans and other animals. Exoskeleton armor makes soldiers invincible; mind-altering drugs make them incapable of remorse. Scientists design swarms of nanoparticles as weapons to target specific ethnic groups. Governments and multinational corporations gather gigabytes of information on every citizen’s race, family life, credit record, telephone conversations, employment history, buying preferences, favorite TV shows.

Welcome to Western civilization, 2004.

In their new collaboration for the “Politics of the Living” series, Derrick Jensen and George Draffan reveal the modern culture of the machine, where corporate might makes technology right, government money feeds the greed for mad science, and absolute surveillance leads to absolute control—and corruption. Through meticulous research and fiercely personal narrative, Jensen and Draffan move beyond journalism and exposé to question our civilization’s very mode of existence. Welcome to the Machine defies our willingness to submit to the institutions and technologies built to rob us of all that makes us human—our connection to the land, our kinship with one another, our place in the living world.

Welcome to the Machine is part of the “Politics of the Living” series, a collection of hard-hitting works by major writers exposing the global governmental and corporate assault on life.