Joanne McNeil

Heard about this book on Benjamin Walker’s podcast where he interviewed the author and said this was his favorite book about the internet.

It was sort of an interesting read, but had kind of a preaching to the choir effect on me. McNeill clearly knows this topic very well from her years of reporting on the internet and technology. I feel like I knew about half of the information in the book simply from living most of my life on the internet, and the stuff I didn’t know about (early internet communities, radical perspectives on how the internet capitalizes upon us) were covered in a very general, newspaper article kind of way. I wanted more about that.

I also wanted more of McNeill’s personal thoughts and feelings and experiences on the internet. Some of my favorite parts were her descriptions of her time on AOL chat rooms in the 90s, or Friendster after that. The trajectory of technology is so fast that it’s useful to remember where we were only 15-20 years ago. I also appreciated the book as a kind of literature review on books about the internet up to now- on my Kindle ebook they really missed an opportunity in not including some kind of hyperlink function to the works McNeill mentions.… (más)

This book gives a comprehensive analysis of the transformation of social interaction due to the internet. It invites you to take on a journey along with the writer's lens and experience since early internet or 'cyberspace.' McNeil breaks down the analysis to seven chapters, each of which represents different concepts such as Search, Visibility, Community, Sharing, and more.

As Neil Postman wrote in Technopoly, every new technology comes with burdens and blessings. Not either-or but this-and-that. Technology makes everything easier for us, especially in this pandemic, but it has changed how we interact with each other. This book explains the distinction between a 'person' and 'user', and what it means to our community in both good and bad light.

I think the changing nature of our social interaction is attributed as well by the online disinhibition effect, describing the lowering of psychological restraints, which often serve to regulate behaviors in the online social environment (Joinson, 2007; Suler, 2004). Suler breaks down the factors behind it as dissociative anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection, dissociative imagination, and minimization of authority. These factors tend to make users behaving freely by their own code, to be benign or hostile toward others.

This book also highlights how we become commodities that are taken for granted by irresponsible developers. It's a fact that many people already know but can't help to turn a blind eye because they're dependant on it. This theme is discussed thoroughly in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Soshana Zuboff, stay tuned for the review since I've yet to finish it!

I'd recommend this book to anyone who lurks on the internet since this book is focused on users, including us. It's hard to find a well-written book outside of the 'developers' behind the tech.

“In this book, I use the world ‘lurking’ only in a positive context. Lurking is listening and witnessing on the internet, rather than opining and capturing the attention of others.” (McNeil, 2020, p.126)

Have you read any social criticism book with the same issue? What do you think about this matter?… (más)

Lovely walk through history (at least of my generation's use of the internet). Ends with some great notes on lurking vs exploiting, and a call for "librarians."

All in all, reading this felt like taking part in a healthy, important conversation. I've the perhaps strange perspective, though, that I don't really use any social media (aside from Goodreads, to obsessively track my book interests, like a really fancy spreadsheet that some IRL-friends have the link to; or sometimes scrolling through Instagram to look at natgeo photographs). So .. the book might not come across as healthy to others that use the web differently than I do - I imagine it would feel a little alarmist.… (más)