Internet Criticism

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. Tarnoff tells the story of the privatization that made the modern internet, and which set in motion the crises that consume it today. It's time to demand an internet by and for the people.

If you want to learn about the internet of things, then pay attention.... You were just woken up in the middle of the night by smart light bulbs in your house blasting at full power for no reason. Your bleary-eyed investigation shows they tried to download a firmware update and failed. At that moment, Alexa starts quietly whispering sweet nonsense to herself in the corner and Roomba starts slamming into the nearest wall. What do you do? Is your house haunted or have the machines finally started an uprising? Neither - it’s just another day in the IoT wonderland.

“It's a great idea, reminiscent of the best work of Philip K. Dick…” —Salon Take a journey to the furthest limits of cyberspace. It is the year 2077 and data pervades. There are no plants or animals in the cities, food grows only on orbiting satellites, and sex has been forgotten. All day long, day after day, humans process their burgeoning data via "PIFFEN meters" implanted in their brains. A worldwide bioelectronic net called the Neural Web links the tiny meters. But Kale Keeler—a 26 year-old, female Web reporter—has glimpsed the ways of the old-time. While attending a rare ...