Digital technologies, big data, tech giants, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are revolutionizing both the tools of economics and the phenomena it studies, understands, and attempts to shape. In her book, Cogs and Monsters, Diana Coyle explores the profound challenges and new opportunities facing the modern economy and analyzes what needs to be done to help policymakers address global challenges—from the effects of the pandemic and inequality to slowing growth and the climate crisis.

According to Coyle, traditional economics still views people as "cogs"—rational, calculating, independent agents operating within clearly defined conditions. However, the digital economy is far more characterized by "monsters"—uncontrollable, snowballing, and socially determined unknowns. Worse, by treating people as cogs, economics itself creates monsters, leaving it without the tools to understand new problems. In this regard, Coyle raises important questions: is economic individualism relevant in the digital age, is it time to measure growth and progress in a new way, and can economics be objective if it influences what it studies?