THE INFORMATION ANIMAL by Alicia Wanless (epub)(Nonfiction)

The Information Animal by Alicia Wanless (ePub) (Nonfiction)
Author: Alicia Wanless
Subtitle: Humans, Technology and the Competition for Reality
First Published: May 29, 2025

The Information Animal is a timely, ambitious exploration of humanity’s enduring relationship with information—and the technologies that shape, disrupt, and pollute it. Alicia Wanless, a leading thinker on the information environment, argues that our responses to new information technologies—from the printing press to social media and AI—follow a pattern as old as civilization itself.

Wanless traces how each technological leap broadens access to information and accelerates its spread. This unleashes waves of new ideas, challenges to authority, and, inevitably, a surge in “information pollution”—misinformation, propaganda, and manipulation. As competition for attention and power intensifies, societies scramble to control the flow and impact of information, often with mixed or counterproductive results.