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Title details for Internet for the People by Ben Tarnoff - Available

Internet for the People

The Fight for Our Digital Future

by Ben Tarnoff
ebook
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1 of 1 copy available
"For all the informational convenience the internet offers, it is deeply flawed. How can it be improved? Writer Ben Tarnoff proposes one possibility in this intriguing book, which urges the development of 'a public lane on the information superhighway.' It's worth checking out for yourself." – Seth MacFarlane
Why is the internet so broken, and what could ever possibly fix it?
In Internet for the People, leading tech writer Ben Tarnoff offers an answer. The internet is broken, he argues, because it is owned by private firms and run for profit. Google annihilates your privacy and Facebook amplifies right-wing propaganda because it is profitable to do so. But the internet wasn't always like this—it had to be remade for the purposes of profit maximization, through a years-long process of privatization that turned a small research network into a powerhouse of global capitalism. Tarnoff tells the story of the privatization that made the modern internet, and which set in motion the crises that consume it today.
The solution to those crises is straightforward: deprivatize the internet. Deprivatization aims at creating an internet where people, and not profit, rule. It calls for shrinking the space of the market and diminishing the power of the profit motive. It calls for abolishing the walled gardens of Google, Facebook, and the other giants that dominate our digital lives and developing publicly and cooperatively owned alternatives that encode real democratic control. To build a better internet, we need to change how it is owned and organized. Not with an eye towards making markets work better, but towards making them less dominant. Not in order to create a more competitive or more rule-bound version of privatization, but to overturn it. Otherwise, a small number of executives and investors will continue to make choices on everyone’s behalf, and these choices will remain tightly bound by the demands of the market. It's time to demand an internet by, and for, the people now.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 14, 2022

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781839762048

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781839762048
      • File size: 351 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      May 1, 2022

      Tarnoff (Voices from the Valley) offers a comprehensive yet palatable history and critique of the internet as it relates to corporatization and profitability. The first part of the book explains how the dominant internet service providers and their infrastructure came into being, practically and politically. The second half is about the companies and organizations that have used internet infrastructure to create and deliver products or services (from dot-com-era start-ups to present-day giants like Facebook and Google). Throughout this easy-reading narrative history, Tarnoff weaves his thesis that the internet must be de-privatized for the good of users, and his political argument becomes increasingly more pointed as it goes on. He uses simple analogies, such as equating online platforms to shopping malls, to explain complicated technical and policy information in ways that will make readers feel like they truly comprehend the vast black box that is the internet. VERDICT Tarnoff's politically infused history and critical analysis of the privatized internet is a useful, brief primer for readers with no prior knowledge on the subject.--Grace O'Hanlon

      Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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