Thought provoking book exploring some of the social and political issues surrounding the internet. Definitely gave me some new perspectives on things. Not a light read though, need to wear your concentrating hat.

The author expresses the urge of Internet freedom. The book has reference about politics and ethics applied to the subject. This is a good choice for a course of ethics and technology for colleague students

After the internet was an interesting read which I enjoyed.
I felt some of it was a tad heavy but if you push through the weight you will still learn a lot just maybe in a couple sittings.

Highlighting the power of the internet, this book talks about a range of different problems including social and political issues that have stemmed from the immense shift that has occurred since the Internet has been in our lives.

It focuses on how whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden , and minority communities are trying to de-centralise the Internet in order to pave the way for a possibly better future.

I was excited to read this as I have a high interest in technology, but this just went way over my head.

The book is written by two highly educated people in the field and they obviously know their stuff, but this book reads way too much like a college essay. The material is dry, with no effort to make it otherwise. There is no balance between the constant fact spitting and then the discussion about them.

I tried to keep reading but I found myself zoning out almost every second paragraph and just was not interested.

There will be people out there who will enjoy this book, but it was just not for me.

Rating:

Cover: 5/10 – I like the discarded keyboards but from afar it just looks dirty and makes the book unappealing. A combination of different abandoned technical aspects would be better.

Content: 3/10 – way too dry.

Overall: 3/10

Interesting thesis about how the Internet has not lived up to being the democratic, community-based open space many people envisioned it would be, and has instead been co-opted by commercial interests and those who would use it for purpoes such as surveillance and the spreading of fake news.

The authors talk about a ‘broken Internet’ and the risks and challenges that this may pose, but this has nothing to do with the horrible feeling you get when you realise you are temporarily ‘disconnected’. The broken-ness of the Internet is more focussed, concerned with the restrictions and limitations that are being placed on the Internet and various services by governments and big businesses, and the risks that this can pose for grassroots activists and citizens who may wish to push against the latest ‘accepted thing’.

At one stage the Internet was thought of to be the free-wheeling saviour of free speech, free ideas and free exchange. On one hand technology has given access to the platform, but the platform itself faces constriction, censorship and restriction. This book is a fascinating, sensitive and engaging look at the status quo and how some forces are reacting against the push to centralise, commodify and change the Internet. It is an academically focussed read, but accessible to the curious generalist if they put a fair bit of effort in.

The authors note concern with how ‘political, economic, and ideological visions of the internet are controlled by Western corporate giants such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft’ -- and these companies dominate the whole process and control even the storage back-end. Theory, real-world practical activity and reference case studies are mixed to get a complete picture and help imagine a democratic internet where human rights, diversity, and social justice are respected and empowered. There is not one whole Internet either, as the effective parallel system extant in China can testify. Even language groupings and regional clusters of services in non-English languages can be a powerful alternative or more critical in their own regard.

Even if you don’t necessarily agree with all the concerns raised or the solutions for possible change, you need not fear the book and enjoy it as an intellectual exercise. It is far from being a naïve undergraduate rant in the guise of an extended essay. It is certainly nuanced, illustrative and thought-provoking, drawing on a wide range of information that is also mirrored back out to the reader for their knowledge and contemplation.

There is a bit of a love-hate relationship with the book. Its core idea is sound and engaging, it is just the presentation of the text can grate since it reads like an out-of-control academic journal article, frequently obscuring a lot of good material in ‘jabber and word soup’ when a more direct, clear approach would be better. Fortunately, it gets a bit clearer once you are past the introductory chapters, but by then a less-patient and dedicated reader may have cast it aside.

A fairly unique book, thus far, you may surmise.

After the Internet, written by Ramesh Srinivasan & Adam Fish and published by Polity. ISBN 9781509506187. YYYY

More Cognitive Dissonance

Ramesh Srinivasan is very economical. He did some ethnographic studies a few years ago and has managed to recycle and repurpose them repeatedly with new titles that are at best tenuous. He has parlayed them into a shelf of books and papers. In his Whose Global Village, which I also reviewed, he chose a title that misleads the reader into thinking the book was about something global, connective and innovative. But it was just his personal experience doing ethnographic work among the Zuni and in Tahrir Square, among others. In After The Internet, we find the same Zuni and Tahrir Square studies being used to portray some sort of future beyond the internet. But there is no such vision in the book. It is entirely backward looking, a remarkable feat for such a title. There is nothing on the horizon but more of the same, and worse, if you read what little he has to say about after the internet.

The big new thought in this book is his Theory of Assemblage, which simply says any complex effort draws on many components and services. When you resist government, the internet is just one service to employ. When you collect a culture, a database is one tool. You can apply this to absolutely anything: when you build a house, you need nails, an electricity vendor, and plumbers. You gather talent and the talent gathers tools to execute the vision. The impact of this theory is basically nothing. You decide nothing with it.

It all stems from the opening - the famous epigraph by JP Barlow, saying the internet is extralegal, independent and free. But of course it isn’t, and after the internet, it still won’t be. It has been co-opted by giant corporations and its main function is surveillance, which government has gleefully and gladly joined. The internet is no longer autonomous, detached or neutral as it was in infancy. Instead, we have the farce of the “sharing economy”, where you share all your personal data, and corporations and governments profit from it. Absolutely nothing new here. And no vision for it from Srinivasan.

It’s a fast summary of where we are, but it leads nowhere.

David Wineberg