[ih] The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, A Philosophy, A Warning

[the keyboard of geoff goodfellow]

EXCERPT:

THE INTERNET HAS lost its way and taken society with it. Since the
mid-2010s, we hear warnings of “dis/misinformation.” We hear about the loss
of trust in our institutions and the need to reinvent them for the internet
age. In short, we are living in a “crisis moment” — one ironically
experienced by many of us while stuck at home.

Many have diagnosed these symptoms and proposed policy solutions, but few
have done the hard work of rummaging around in the internet’s history to
find the roots of the problems — and almost none have taken a truly long
view. In *The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is*
<https://amzn.to/3Jt1s7G>, Justin E. H. Smith, a philosopher and historian
of science, argues that we’ve been much too narrow-minded in our
understanding of the internet. In presenting a longue durée history, he
challenges our assumptions about what the internet is and what we’re doing
when we’re on it. Only by understanding the internet’s long history — by
understanding the circumstances in which the internet’s many parts were
conceived — can we, he claims, take back control of our lives and shape the
internet in a way more conducive to human flourishing.

¤

JULIEN CROCKETT: You credit the birth of *The Internet Is Not What You
Think It Is <https://amzn.to/3Jt1s7G>* with a melancholic piece you wrote
in 2018–’19, “*It’s All Over*.” Can you tell us about that piece and why it
inspired you to write about the internet and ultimately this book?...

[...]
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-internet-is-not-what-you-think-it-is-a-history-a-philosophy-a-warning/

-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True