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Lurking
- How a Person Became a User
- Narrated by: Joanne McNeil
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
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Publisher's Summary
This program is read by the author.
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.
A Macmillan Audio production from MCD
Critic Reviews
Esquire Magazine Best Books of the Year, 2020
What listeners say about Lurking
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Alejandra
- 11-24-20
Very interesting content horrible narration
This is the kind of content that takes a while for you to get the gang of and warm up to.
The author narrates and, well... it should be exciting when an author reads their book but, this is not the case. Her reading is pretty bad, slow and monotone so, it is PAINFUL to continue. I’m proud of myself for going through almost NINE hours of this.
The content is good. It’s the story of the internet and how we became users. How evil Facebook is and how awful we are as humans. Really diving into the lack of democracy in platforms, lack of privacy and no freedom.
Very interesting. It would have been way better if someone with better tone and diction would have done this one.
1 person found this helpful
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- JAMES W.
- 05-19-20
brilliant and mind altering
i enjoyed every minute of the book and Joanne's research is never assuming. Constantly challenging my own preconceptions about online spaces and users. thank you.
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Story
In this important and revealing book, Jamie Bartlett takes us deep into the digital underworld and presents an extraordinary look at the Internet we don't know. Beginning with the rise of the Internet and the conflicts and battles that defined its early years, Bartlett reports on trolls, pornographers, drug dealers, hackers, political extremists, Bitcoin programmers, and vigilantes - and puts a human face on those who have many reasons to stay anonymous.
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Good, but incomplete
- By Peter on 05-03-17
By: Jamie Bartlett
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Because Internet
- Understanding the New Rules of Language
- By: Gretchen McCulloch
- Narrated by: Gretchen McCulloch
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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Because Internet is for anyone who's ever puzzled over how to punctuate a text message or wondered where memes come from. It's the perfect book for understanding how the internet is changing the English language, why that's a good thing, and what our online interactions reveal about who we are.
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Why Do Authors Insist on Reading Their Own Books?
- By Ross Bennett on 08-20-19
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The Filter Bubble
- What the Internet Is Hiding from You
- By: Eli Pariser
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In December 2009, Google began customizing its search results for each user. Instead of giving you the most broadly popular result, Google now tries to predict what you are most likely to click on. According to MoveOn.org board president Eli Pariser, Google's change in policy is symptomatic of the most significant shift to take place on the Web in recent years: the rise of personalization.
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Now in the top 3 best books I've ever read
- By Brian Esserlieu on 05-26-11
By: Eli Pariser
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Facebook
- The Inside Story
- By: Steven Levy
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 18 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The definitive history, packed with untold stories, of one of America’s most controversial and powerful companies: Facebook. Based on hundreds of interviews from inside and outside Facebook, Levy’s sweeping narrative of incredible entrepreneurial success and failure digs deep into the whole story of the company that has changed the world and reaped the consequences.
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Not a history of Facebook
- By Rodney on 12-02-20
By: Steven Levy
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Here Comes Everybody
- The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
- By: Clay Shirky
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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A revelatory examination of how the wildfirelike spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form groups and exist within them, with profound long-term economic and social effects - for good and for ill. A handful of kite hobbyists scattered around the world find each other online and collaborate on the most radical improvement in kite design in decades. A midwestern professor of Middle Eastern history starts a blog after 9/11 that becomes essential reading for journalists covering the Iraq war.
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Sorry I don't see the magic
- By David Turkington on 10-22-12
By: Clay Shirky
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Smarter Than You Think
- How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better
- By: Clive Thompson
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In Smarter Than You Think, Thompson documents how every technological innovation - from the printing press to the telegraph - has provoked the very same anxieties that plague us today. We panic that life will never be the same, that our attentions are eroding, that culture is being trivialized. But as in the past, we adapt, learning to use the new and retaining what’s good of the old.
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Title should be Getting Smarter Through Technology
- By A. Yoshida on 03-10-17
By: Clive Thompson
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Magic and Loss
- The Internet as Art
- By: Virginia Heffernan
- Narrated by: Candace Thaxton, Virginia Heffernan - introduction
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Just as Susan Sontag did for photography and Marshall McLuhan did for television, Virginia Heffernan (called one of the "best living writers of English prose") reveals the logic and aesthetics behind the Internet. Since its inception, the Internet has morphed from merely an extension of traditional media into its own full-fledged civilization. It is among mankind's great masterpieces - a massive work of art. As an idea, it rivals monotheism.
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Thought-provoking and amusing read.
- By Don on 07-18-16
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Antisocial
- Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation
- By: Andrew Marantz
- Narrated by: Andrew Marantz
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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From a rising star at The New Yorker, a deeply immersive chronicle of how the optimistic entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley set out to create a free and democratic internet - and how the cynical propagandists of the alt-right exploited that freedom to propel the extreme into the mainstream.
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Amazing read!!!
- By Nick H on 10-23-19
By: Andrew Marantz
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Platform
- The Art and Science of Personal Branding
- By: Cynthia Johnson
- Narrated by: Cynthia Johnson
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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The indispensable guide to developing a personal brand, building an audience, and nurturing followers, by digital marketing thought-leader Cynthia Johnson.
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first couple chapters are good then waste of time
- By Kevin Slavin on 03-19-19
By: Cynthia Johnson
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No Filter
- The Inside Story of Instagram
- By: Sarah Frier
- Narrated by: Megan Tusing, Sarah Frier
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2010, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger released a photo-sharing app called Instagram, with one simple but irresistible feature: It would make anything you captured look more beautiful. The cofounders cultivated a community of photographers and artisans around the app, and it quickly went mainstream. In less than two years, it caught Facebook’s attention: Mark Zuckerberg bought the company for a historic one billion dollars when Instagram had only 13 employees.
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Well Told Story of the Rise and Reach of Instagram
- By Jenny Jenkins on 05-03-20
By: Sarah Frier
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The Inevitable
- Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
- By: Kevin Kelly
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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From one of our leading technology thinkers and writers, a guide through the 12 technological imperatives that will shape the next 30 years and transform our lives. Much of what will happen in the next 30 years is inevitable, driven by technological trends that are already in motion. In this fascinating, provocative new book, Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives - from virtual reality in the home to an on-demand economy to artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture.
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Predicting is hard, especially about the future
- By Michael on 02-20-17
By: Kevin Kelly
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Antisocial Media
- How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy
- By: Siva Vaidhyanathan
- Narrated by: Jack Garrett
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In Antisocial Media, Siva Vaidhyanathan explains how Facebook devolved from an innocent social site hacked together by Harvard students into a force that, while it may make personal life just a little more pleasurable, makes democracy a lot more challenging.
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a modest look at what Facebook can repair
- By Elkobri on 01-19-21
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Break Through the Noise
- The Nine Rules to Capture Global Attention
- By: Tim Staples, Josh Young
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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The odds of getting a video onto YouTube's front page are 1-in-2,000,0000, but Tim Staples, founder and CEO of Shareability, knows how to make the algorithms of Youtube, Google, Facebook and Instagram work for you - and he has the results to prove it, with a thriving business that has gotten their videos onto YouTube's front page an amazing 25 times. Here he shows savvy marketers, entrepreneurs, and online celebrity wannabes how they, too, can develop clever videos that amass millions of views.
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NOT A GOOD BOOK TO BE
- By FABIO HART on 05-08-22
By: Tim Staples, and others