Totally sounded like an interesting book but then the review convinced me it wasn't worth my time. Job done for that reviewer.

After reading this article I feel that I know less now than I did about the subject than I did going in. It didn’t sell me on anything except to stay away from the book.

I thought the other comments were maybe being mean. But no, I discovered the other comments were correctly trying to stop me from wasting my time. Book sounds terrible, reviewer didn’t like it and I’m sure I wouldn’t either.

It seems the review was quite negative, it's a pity because I'm interested in the relationship between power and technology. I know that the review is already negative enough, so it makes sense the author didn't recomend alternatives, but can anyone recomend any books or articles on this?

I mean you might as well just read the book? The reviewer said that if you want to get in touch with the literature on power and technology then this book is a place to start.

Ah yes, makes sense it's good for an introduction (I guess the negative conclusion distracted me from that)

I think there was an essay, sortof relevant, on the difference in philosophy between tolkien and lewis. Tolkien believing that technology (the ring) would always fall into the hands of the powerful, and be a corrupting influence, and thus was ultimately irredeemable. Maybe if all you had to go on was human history up to but including ww1, it might be a reasonable conclusion to draw.

It makes sense since, although Tolkien wasn't much interested in discussing politics openly, his political opinions were more related to the Whigs and would agree with Burke's "absolute power corrupts absolutely". Although he wouldn't like to associate the Ring with a real life allegory, the Ring's true purpose is to give command to its creator, Sauron, ultimately command all over Middle-Earth. In a sense, the Ring is a technology developed by Sauron to achieve that objective. From this point, maybe a critique of technology (the negative consequences of technology as a means to command nature) can be made using LotR as a frame, but that'd require a more elaborate argument.