Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy - David Graeber

David Graeber

Where does the desire for endless rules, regulations, and bureaucracy come from? How did we come to spend so much of our time filling out forms? And just how much are our lives being ruined by all this nonstop documentation?

To answer these questions, anthropologist David Graeber- one of our most important and provocative thinkers-traces the peculiar and unexpected ways we relate to bureaucracy today and reveals how it shapes our lives in ways we may not even notice.Is the inane, annoying paperwork we confront every day really a cipher for state violence? And is the capitalist promise of salvation-through-technology just a tool for the powerful to exert more control?

Graeber provides a forceful, radical answer to these questions, though he also suggests that there may be something perversely appealing-even romantic-about bureaucracy.