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Lurking: How a Person Became a User
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22/99
Critics' Rating Index
15/99
Readers' Rating Index
86/99
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95/99
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About This Book
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.
Reviews
"McNeil's argument isn't wrong, necessarily, but her narrative logic can seem random."
"Alongside this history, Lurking provides richly descriptive narratives of the more familiar and quotidian dramas that generate these platforms' content ..."
"She resists cynicism, while remaining straightforwardly critical of the corrosive forces of capitalism, racism and misogyny."
"Her book is that trickiest of things: a cautionary tale without a Golden Age ..."
"Yet though McNeil's account is largely elegiac in tone, she guards against the lure of nostalgia."
"At its best, Lurking succeeds like the best apps: offering an experience you never suspected you needed but can't imagine going without — a personal U.X."
"The author proposes concrete safeguards for building a better internet."
"Veering far from the technological focus that often grounds books about digital experiences, McNeil presents an original take on a fascinating and important subject and makes it clear that there is much to consider and explore and an endless array of approaches with which to do so."
"When we as persons are totally lost, stuck at home, and glued helplessly to screens, it seems that we as users have to come to our own rescue."
"the hope for a truly user-friendly internet...is what will make McNeil's history resonate with her audience."
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