Description

LONGLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2026

‘A tremendous contribution to a debate that is of existential importance to us all’ NAOMI KLEIN

‘The book that Big Tech does not want you to read’ MALCOM HARRIS

‘Excellent and timely’ KAREN HAO

The cloud is an ethereal world of convenience and freedom. A place where memories and messages live nowhere and everywhere. But on the ground, sprawling server farms power our online world – while plundering our physical one.

Delving into the labyrinthine industry of data centres that are now multiplying at an alarming rate, Hyperscale is an urgent expose of the ruinous physical infrastructure of the digital age. In the race to meet the AI revolution, tech overlords are waging a resource war as they trade our future for their profit.

Marx unmasks a civilisational time bomb in the making with razor-sharp reporting and analysis to show that the greatest threat is not the spectre of AI, but a global disaster that has already begun.

Publisher Review

Combining historical research with investigative reporting and lucid analysis, Paris Marx cuts through the industry hype to expose the immeasurable costs of Big Tech’s AI arms race. A tremendous contribution to a debate that is of existential importance to us all — Naomi Klein An excellent, timely compendium of the history and layered social, environmental, and health impacts of data centres for anyone who seeks to understand the jaw-dropping numbers and real human-scale stories behind the headlines — Karen Hao, author of EMPIRE OF AI A catalogue of the drawbacks of data centre development, Hyperscale is a book Big Tech does not want you to read — Malcolm Harris, author of PALO ALTO A polemical on-the-ground investigation into the rapid spread of data centres and their impact on the environment and the communities where Big Tech is building them … focusing on the people and places affected by their ambitious plans — FT Business Book Awards Longlist 2026 * FINANCIAL TIMES * If you want to understand where the future is heading, you have to read Paris Marx’s Hyperscale. Urgent and illuminating, this is a perfect primer for the key infrastructure of the twenty-first century — Brian Merchant, author of BLOOD IN THE MACHINE Marx turns one of the most pressing political, economic and ecological issues of our time into a truly human story … data centres might just be the issue that can unite us all — Sarah Jaffe, author of WORK WON’T LOVE YOU BACK Realistic and inspiring. While the book documents the harms of the broligarchy’s attempt to cover the entire planet with datacenters and create a world in which we can’t live without them, Marx also highlights movements building ‘human scale’ technology, helping us liberate our imagination from the singular path we’ve been sold by the AI industry — Timnit Gebru, executive director of the Distributed AI Research Institute An urgent, deeply reported examination of how the relentless expansion of data centers is reshaping communities, economies, and the environment. The portrait that emerges is both eye-opening and alarming, with Marx’s central conclusion striking in its clarity. Timely and persuasive, this revelatory account is difficult to ignore * PUBLISHERS WEEKLY * Praise for Road to Nowhere:
Marx’s invaluable book explains how and why big tech’s utopian transit projects crashed and burned and what the alternative might look like — Brian Merchant, author of The One Device Sharply rendered, compelling, and illuminating * Protean Magazine * Marx [delivers] an astute critique of Silicon Valley and compelling vision of a world where technology is instead used to deliver social good — Wendy Liu, author of Abolish Silicon Valley Marx unmasks Silicon Valley’s place in the broader crisis of capital, and the social, economic and ecological damage it does * The Ecologist *