Lurking: How a Person Became a User

Hardcover, 304 pages

Publié 3 octobre 2020 par MCD.

ISBN :: 978-0-374-19433-8

(2 critiques)

A concise but wide-ranging personal history of the internet from—for the first time—the point of view of the user

In a shockingly short amount of time, the internet has bound people around the world together and torn us apart and changed not just the way we communicate but who we are and who we can be. It has created a new, unprecedented cultural space that we are all a part of—even if we don’t participate, that is how we participate—but by which we’re continually surprised, betrayed, enriched, befuddled. We have churned through platforms and technologies and in turn been churned by them. And yet, the internet is us and always has been.

In Lurking, Joanne McNeil digs deep and identifies the primary (if sometimes contradictory) concerns of people online: searching, safety, privacy, identity, community, anonymity, and visibility. She charts what it is that brought people online and what keeps us …

A concise but wide-ranging personal history of the internet from—for the first time—the point of view of the user

In a shockingly short amount of time, the internet has bound people around the world together and torn us apart and changed not just the way we communicate but who we are and who we can be. It has created a new, unprecedented cultural space that we are all a part of—even if we don’t participate, that is how we participate—but by which we’re continually surprised, betrayed, enriched, befuddled. We have churned through platforms and technologies and in turn been churned by them. And yet, the internet is us and always has been.

In Lurking, Joanne McNeil digs deep and identifies the primary (if sometimes contradictory) concerns of people online: searching, safety, privacy, identity, community, anonymity, and visibility. She charts what it is that brought people online and what keeps us here even as the social equations of digital life—what we’re made to trade, knowingly or otherwise, for the benefits of the internet—have shifted radically beneath us. It is a story we are accustomed to hearing as tales of entrepreneurs and visionaries and dynamic and powerful corporations, but there is a more profound, intimate story that hasn’t yet been told.

Long one of the most incisive, ferociously intelligent, and widely respected cultural critics online, McNeil here establishes a singular vision of who we are now, tells the stories of how we became us, and helps us start to figure out what we do now.

3 editions

Victor Villas reviewed Lurking: How a Person Became a User by Joanne McNeil

Provocative

3 étoiles

This book is a good companion to Brotopia, which opens up deeper and more critical discussions regarding the context and struggles surrounding the Internet and the growth of the big platforms of today.

Still very US-centric, with the occasional mentions of tragedy elsewhere like the Myanmar genocide. The feeling I get from the flow of the book is that it sometimes reads like a sociology essay, sometimes a free form op-ed, a bit of memoir, with elements of tweet-deep shower-thoughts. It keeps the text interesting and not so monotonous as one would expect from a historian/critic, but it also made me feel like the book didn't really have a direction or a central thesis. It just is, like digital content is allowed to.

I consumed this in audio-book form, narrated by the author. I'd say the near monotone reading sort of matches the insider-but-amateur angle of the content, but …

This book is a good companion to Brotopia, which opens up deeper and more critical discussions regarding the context and struggles surrounding the Internet and the growth of the big platforms of today.

Still very US-centric, with the occasional mentions of tragedy elsewhere like the Myanmar genocide. The feeling I get from the flow of the book is that it sometimes reads like a sociology essay, sometimes a free form op-ed, a bit of memoir, with elements of tweet-deep shower-thoughts. It keeps the text interesting and not so monotonous as one would expect from a historian/critic, but it also made me feel like the book didn't really have a direction or a central thesis. It just is, like digital content is allowed to.

I consumed this in audio-book form, narrated by the author. I'd say the near monotone reading sort of matches the insider-but-amateur angle of the content, but fatigue made me listen in shorter bits than what I usually do. Differently from most non-fiction out there, if attention disperses and one misses a paragraph of this book there's a decent chance you actually lost something.

pixouls@bookwyrm.social reviewed Lurking: How a Person Became a User by Joanne McNeil

a side of the internet not often discussed

4 étoiles

I listened to this book as an audiobook narrated by the author. I first learned about it in 2020 and watched "Why Trust a Corporation to do a Library's Job". I think this made me have a different impression of what to expect from the book. Some of it was information I was familiar with and some of it was new. It's also quite personal as others have noted. I was really surprised to learn about a side of Ello that didn't make the same impression on me when I was a teenager who didn't know about the drama that was happening around it. I think it'd be a book that would get along well with some friends, but I'm not sure what the person I'd recommend it to would be exactly. Perhaps something along the lines of someone who'd be interested in books like Blockchain Chicken Farm. It's the …

I listened to this book as an audiobook narrated by the author. I first learned about it in 2020 and watched "Why Trust a Corporation to do a Library's Job". I think this made me have a different impression of what to expect from the book. Some of it was information I was familiar with and some of it was new. It's also quite personal as others have noted. I was really surprised to learn about a side of Ello that didn't make the same impression on me when I was a teenager who didn't know about the drama that was happening around it. I think it'd be a book that would get along well with some friends, but I'm not sure what the person I'd recommend it to would be exactly. Perhaps something along the lines of someone who'd be interested in books like Blockchain Chicken Farm. It's the type of thing I feel like not enough of my peers know about.

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Surviving this digital age