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Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy
Celebrants and skeptics alike have produced valuable analyses of the Internet’s effect on us and our world, oscillating between utopian bliss and dystopian hell. But according to Robert W. McChesney, arguments on both sides fail to address the relationship between economic power and the Internet.
McChesney’s award-winning Rich Media, Poor Democracy skewered the assumption that a society drenched in commercial information is a democratic one. In Digital Disconnect, McChesney returns to this provocative thesis in light of the advances of the digital age. He argues that the sharp decline in the enforcement of antitrust violations, the increase in patents on digital technology and proprietary systems and massive indirect subsidies and other policies have made the internet a place of numbing commercialism. A handful of monopolies now dominate the political economy, from Google, which garners a 97 percent share of the mobile search market, to Microsoft, whose operating system is used by over 90 percent of the world’s computers.
Capitalism’s colonization of the Internet has spurred the collapse of credible journalism and made the internet an unparalleled apparatus for government and corporate surveillance and a disturbingly antidemocratic force.
In Digital Disconnect, Robert McChesney offers a groundbreaking critique of the Internet, urging us to reclaim the democratizing potential of the digital revolution while we still can.
McChesney’s award-winning Rich Media, Poor Democracy skewered the assumption that a society drenched in commercial information is a democratic one. In Digital Disconnect, McChesney returns to this provocative thesis in light of the advances of the digital age. He argues that the sharp decline in the enforcement of antitrust violations, the increase in patents on digital technology and proprietary systems and massive indirect subsidies and other policies have made the internet a place of numbing commercialism. A handful of monopolies now dominate the political economy, from Google, which garners a 97 percent share of the mobile search market, to Microsoft, whose operating system is used by over 90 percent of the world’s computers.
Capitalism’s colonization of the Internet has spurred the collapse of credible journalism and made the internet an unparalleled apparatus for government and corporate surveillance and a disturbingly antidemocratic force.
In Digital Disconnect, Robert McChesney offers a groundbreaking critique of the Internet, urging us to reclaim the democratizing potential of the digital revolution while we still can.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
39 people are currently reading
1148 people want to read
About the author
Robert W. McChesney
51 books104 followersRobert Waterman McChesney was an American professor notable in the history and political economy of communications, and the role media play in democratic and capitalist societies. He was the Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He co-founded the Free Press, a national media reform organization. From 2002 to 2012, he hosted Media Matters, a weekly radio program every Sunday afternoon on WILL (AM), Illinois Public Media radio.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
July 9, 2013
Having met McChesney, Nichols and a number of people referenced in the book I was skeptical as to whether or not this book would, despite its highly critical title, would call for a serious reexamination of capitalism and neo-liberal policies or just resort to small step policies that I have heard some of the parties involved advocate for in the past. To my (now I'm thinking shouldn't be) surprise McChesney actually examines the liberal small step reaction to past crises and instead makes the assertion that it is the system itself and no one outgrowth that is at fault. He basically comes to the position that it is the system itself that needs to change and in order to survive with any semblance of humanity it is capitalism that actually needs to go. The depth of his research and his examination of other techno-philosophers high hopes for the egalitarian nature of the internet and the unrealistic or at least unrealized reality of this visions was impressive. The numerous references and support by scholars, organizers and activists across a broad range of topics showcases how well reasoned his argument is...a nice surprise.
January 11, 2018
Highly recommended for anyone still holding utopian ideas of how the Information Superhighway is going to spread democracy and equality and save us from ourselves. It's also worth reading if you're interested in journalism and have yet to answer the question of why the news sucks and is often inaccurate, incomplete, and/or misleading. It's depressing to review this as I receive a news alert that the House just voted to renew all of the surveillance tactics exposed by Edward Snowden.
More than just wailing over the crises in journalism, public education, and privacy, this book is valuable because McChesney goes into detail describing the economics behind why the internet is failing us and why it will continue to do so. He explains things such as monopsonies, network effects, and economies of scale in easy-to-understand language. That is, the internet is set up to reward a sort of "virtual 1%"--if you're not big enough to land on the first page of search results, you effectively don't exist. Content is still king, but the quality and accuracy of the content don't matter.
Overall, this book is about "why capitalism doesn't work" in the context of the internet and digital media. This is because, unlike the typical dot-com gurus who praise the internet because it's made them rich, McChesney is looking at this situation as a journalist and is examining the broader economic and political ramifications.
"...the so-called War on Terror, in which the enemies are largely unseen, and their activities unknown, has been a boon for the national security state. The War on Terror will last as long as our leaders tell us it must last; in other words, it is permanent. Americans now live in an Orwellian world where leaders periodically warn them about some evil 'Eurasia' to get the blood boiling, but there is no need to provide evidence or context. The leaders are to be trusted, their budgets approved; to challenge them is to be unpatriotic, if not treasonous." Um...yes.
"Our political system has become so corrupt that it is losing the capacity to address problems that threaten its own existence." Some may find this a stretch in terms of the government itself, but look at the crises within our two major political parties.
"By 2012, only one in six young American high school graduates in the labor market--i.e., working-class young people--could secure full-time employment, and wages are stagnant or falling, with a massive oversupply of labor for available jobs."
"The system is failing, conventional policies and institutions are increasingly discredited, and fundamental changes of one form or another are likely to come, for better or worse. One look at how different nations responded to the crises of the 1930s gives a sense of the broad range of possible outcomes."
More than just wailing over the crises in journalism, public education, and privacy, this book is valuable because McChesney goes into detail describing the economics behind why the internet is failing us and why it will continue to do so. He explains things such as monopsonies, network effects, and economies of scale in easy-to-understand language. That is, the internet is set up to reward a sort of "virtual 1%"--if you're not big enough to land on the first page of search results, you effectively don't exist. Content is still king, but the quality and accuracy of the content don't matter.
Overall, this book is about "why capitalism doesn't work" in the context of the internet and digital media. This is because, unlike the typical dot-com gurus who praise the internet because it's made them rich, McChesney is looking at this situation as a journalist and is examining the broader economic and political ramifications.
"...the so-called War on Terror, in which the enemies are largely unseen, and their activities unknown, has been a boon for the national security state. The War on Terror will last as long as our leaders tell us it must last; in other words, it is permanent. Americans now live in an Orwellian world where leaders periodically warn them about some evil 'Eurasia' to get the blood boiling, but there is no need to provide evidence or context. The leaders are to be trusted, their budgets approved; to challenge them is to be unpatriotic, if not treasonous." Um...yes.
"Our political system has become so corrupt that it is losing the capacity to address problems that threaten its own existence." Some may find this a stretch in terms of the government itself, but look at the crises within our two major political parties.
"By 2012, only one in six young American high school graduates in the labor market--i.e., working-class young people--could secure full-time employment, and wages are stagnant or falling, with a massive oversupply of labor for available jobs."
"The system is failing, conventional policies and institutions are increasingly discredited, and fundamental changes of one form or another are likely to come, for better or worse. One look at how different nations responded to the crises of the 1930s gives a sense of the broad range of possible outcomes."
September 5, 2013
A timely book on the internet by a respected and prolific media critic. The author, Robert McChesney, notes how, after the internet's development by the public sector, it was initially championed by anti-capitalists, but has been co-opted by capitalism and - in turn - has accelerated and consolidated capitalism. Here are a few good quotes that leapt out at me:
[The] respectable left... sees its role as humanizing capitalism, not questioning it.
Whenever scholars examine their own society, it is generally taboo to challenge the prerogatives and privileges of those who stand atop it and benefit from the status quo, even in political democracies.
Capitalism tends to promote inequality, monopoly, hypercommercialism, and stagnation, all of which are corrosive to political democracy.
The system [of capitalism] is the most fluid and dynamic class society in history, although that is a bit like saying someone is the best ice hockey player in Sri Lanka.
It is true that with the advent of the Internet many of the successful giants — Apple and Google come to mind — were begun by idealists who may have been uncertain whether they really wanted to be old-fashioned capitalists. The system in short order has whipped them into shape. Any qualms about privacy, commercialism, avoiding taxes, or paying low wages to Third World factory workers were quickly forgotten.
“Wealth gives rise to a me-first mentality,” as the psychologist Dacher Keltner puts it, and the greed it rationalizes “undermines moral behavior.”
Internet-related industries have led in offshoring manufacturing jobs, primarily to low-wage locales like China.
In addition, offshoring and the threat of more offshoring put tremendous downward pressure on wages and working conditions for jobs that remain in the United States (and other advanced countries).
It is difficult to reconcile such extreme inequality with anything but a superficial democracy.
“The real key to success” in a capitalist economy, Joseph Stiglitz writes, “is to make sure there won’t ever be competition for a long enough time that one can make a monopoly killing in the meanwhile.”
Capitalism tends to evolve into what is called monopolistic competition, or oligopoly. These are markets where a handful of firms dominate output or sales in the industry and have such market power that they can set the price at which their product sells.
For [billionaire investor Warren] Buffett it is all about monopoly power, not management.
The legendary adman Rosser Reeves was reputed to have repeated the same presentation for years for newly hired copywriters at his Ted Bates advertising agency in the 1960s. He would hold up two identical shiny silver dollars, one in each hand, and would tell his audience in effect: “Never forget that your job is very simple. It is to make people think the silver dollar in my left hand is much more desirable than the silver dollar in my right hand.”
Inger Stole notes the irony that the same corporations that have battled successfully to denude the public sector of the resources it needs to tackle social problems turn around and offer to address the same problems as part of marketing campaigns, with dubious outcomes that do only one thing for certain: commercialize public life.
Technology is central to growth, and growth is central to capitalism.
What has been missing from the narrative is that the nations with the freest press systems are also the nations that make the greatest public investment in journalism and therefore provide the basis for being strong democracies.
“Democracy [is] when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers,” Aristotle observed in his Politics.
Hayes wrote, “This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government by the corporations, of the corporations, and for the corporations.”
“We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
It is implicitly understood that if a disproportionate percentage of lower-income people do not get involved in politics, the wealthy benefit.
For all of the digital revolution’s accomplishments, it has failed to deliver on much of the promise that was once seen as inherent in the technology.
If the Internet actually has improved the world over the past twenty years as much as its champions once predicted, I dread to think where the world would be if it had never existed.
Had the matter been left to the private sector, the Internet may never have come into existence.
In corporate-think, the proper role of the government goes like this: make the massive initial investments and take all the risk. Then, if and when profitable applications become apparent, let commercial interests move in and rake in the chips, soon followed by shamelessly denouncing government taxation and regulation as interference with the productive work of the private sector.
“We’ve come to the point,” Peter Nowak writes, “where it’s almost impossible to separate any American-made technology from the American military.”
Paul Weyrich, founder of the Heritage Foundation and one of the great organizers of the corporate right since the 1970s, put it bluntly in a 1980 speech to conservative activists: “I don’t want everybody to vote . . . our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
A duopolistic party system in a modern capitalist society like the United States will tend to provide a “competition between elites,” which “formulate the issues.” The basics of the political economy are agreed upon by the two parties and are off the table for public debate or discussion.
The poor and even middle class have virtually no influence over their elected representatives. Not so for the wealthy.
Allowing businesses to write off their advertising expenditures as a business expense on their tax returns not only costs the government tens of billions annually in revenues, but also encourages ever greater commercialism in our culture.
If there is a bias in the amount and tenor of coverage, it should be toward those with the least economic and political power.
As journalism subsidies increase, the overall reporting in those nations does not kowtow but in fact grows more adversarial to the government in power.
“The process of brain-washing the public starts with off-the-record briefings for newspapermen,” I.F. Stone wrote.
Technologies, far from relieving workloads, have made it possible for the typical American worker to provide as much as a month and a half of unpaid overtime annually, just by using their smartphones and computers for work at all hours while outside the workplace: “Almost half feel they have no choice.”
Nothing enraged the Internet community more than advertising and commercialism.
The first commercial e-mail message... was flamed by countless Usenet users, meaning that they clogged the advertiser’s inbox with contemptuous messages demanding that the sales pitch be removed and such conduct never be repeated.
In short, the Internet monopolists sit at the commanding heights of U.S. and world capitalism. When Fortune magazine compiled its list of the top twelve entrepreneurs of the past generation, the founders of Internet giants Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google occupied four of the top five slots.
High-tech firms effectively pay a third less in taxes on the same amount of profits as the balance of the U.S. corporate community.
“The best minds of my generation,” an early Facebook employee told The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal, “are thinking about how to make people click ads.”
Only a small number of people are aware, for example, that over half of the roughly 84 data categories Facebook collects about its users are not available for them to see.
It “is a surveillance tool made in heaven,” John Naughton writes, “because much of the surveillance can be done, not by expensive and fallible human beings, but by computers.”
Without meaning to be pejorative or alarmist, it is difficult to avoid noting that what is emerging veers toward a classic definition of fascism.
The journalism crisis has yet to reach the boardroom.
Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times captured the essence of this requirement in his assessment of AOL’s 2011 purchase of the Huffington Post: “To grasp the Huffington Post’s business model, picture a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates.” In the “new-media landscape,” he wrote, “it’s already clear that the merger will push more journalists more deeply into the tragically expanding low-wage sector of our increasingly brutal economy.”
“In the new media,” Rutten concludes, we find “many of the worst abuses of the old economy’s industrial capitalism—the sweatshop, the speedup, and piecework; huge profits for the owners; desperation, drudgery, and exploitation for the workers. No child labor, yet, but if there were more page views in it . . .”
Journatic’s local coverage is provided by low-paid writers and freelancers in the United States and, ironically enough, the Philippines, where Journatic hires writers “able to commit to 250 pieces/week minimum” at 35 to 40 cents a piece.
StatSheet, a subsidiary of Automated Insights, uses algorithms to turn numerical data into narrative articles for its 418 sports websites.
A system that promotes poverty, inequality, waste, and destruction—to the point of making the planet uninhabitable—deserves no free pass from democratic interrogation in the present, whatever its past achievements.
The crisis of our times is that capitalism undermines democracy. The choice we face is whether to expand democracy or let it continue to shrivel: Expanding it requires confronting really existing capitalism head-on. It is the defining issue of our times, the basis for the critical juncture in which we live.
[The] respectable left... sees its role as humanizing capitalism, not questioning it.
Whenever scholars examine their own society, it is generally taboo to challenge the prerogatives and privileges of those who stand atop it and benefit from the status quo, even in political democracies.
Capitalism tends to promote inequality, monopoly, hypercommercialism, and stagnation, all of which are corrosive to political democracy.
The system [of capitalism] is the most fluid and dynamic class society in history, although that is a bit like saying someone is the best ice hockey player in Sri Lanka.
It is true that with the advent of the Internet many of the successful giants — Apple and Google come to mind — were begun by idealists who may have been uncertain whether they really wanted to be old-fashioned capitalists. The system in short order has whipped them into shape. Any qualms about privacy, commercialism, avoiding taxes, or paying low wages to Third World factory workers were quickly forgotten.
“Wealth gives rise to a me-first mentality,” as the psychologist Dacher Keltner puts it, and the greed it rationalizes “undermines moral behavior.”
Internet-related industries have led in offshoring manufacturing jobs, primarily to low-wage locales like China.
In addition, offshoring and the threat of more offshoring put tremendous downward pressure on wages and working conditions for jobs that remain in the United States (and other advanced countries).
It is difficult to reconcile such extreme inequality with anything but a superficial democracy.
“The real key to success” in a capitalist economy, Joseph Stiglitz writes, “is to make sure there won’t ever be competition for a long enough time that one can make a monopoly killing in the meanwhile.”
Capitalism tends to evolve into what is called monopolistic competition, or oligopoly. These are markets where a handful of firms dominate output or sales in the industry and have such market power that they can set the price at which their product sells.
For [billionaire investor Warren] Buffett it is all about monopoly power, not management.
The legendary adman Rosser Reeves was reputed to have repeated the same presentation for years for newly hired copywriters at his Ted Bates advertising agency in the 1960s. He would hold up two identical shiny silver dollars, one in each hand, and would tell his audience in effect: “Never forget that your job is very simple. It is to make people think the silver dollar in my left hand is much more desirable than the silver dollar in my right hand.”
Inger Stole notes the irony that the same corporations that have battled successfully to denude the public sector of the resources it needs to tackle social problems turn around and offer to address the same problems as part of marketing campaigns, with dubious outcomes that do only one thing for certain: commercialize public life.
Technology is central to growth, and growth is central to capitalism.
What has been missing from the narrative is that the nations with the freest press systems are also the nations that make the greatest public investment in journalism and therefore provide the basis for being strong democracies.
“Democracy [is] when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers,” Aristotle observed in his Politics.
Hayes wrote, “This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government by the corporations, of the corporations, and for the corporations.”
“We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
It is implicitly understood that if a disproportionate percentage of lower-income people do not get involved in politics, the wealthy benefit.
For all of the digital revolution’s accomplishments, it has failed to deliver on much of the promise that was once seen as inherent in the technology.
If the Internet actually has improved the world over the past twenty years as much as its champions once predicted, I dread to think where the world would be if it had never existed.
Had the matter been left to the private sector, the Internet may never have come into existence.
In corporate-think, the proper role of the government goes like this: make the massive initial investments and take all the risk. Then, if and when profitable applications become apparent, let commercial interests move in and rake in the chips, soon followed by shamelessly denouncing government taxation and regulation as interference with the productive work of the private sector.
“We’ve come to the point,” Peter Nowak writes, “where it’s almost impossible to separate any American-made technology from the American military.”
Paul Weyrich, founder of the Heritage Foundation and one of the great organizers of the corporate right since the 1970s, put it bluntly in a 1980 speech to conservative activists: “I don’t want everybody to vote . . . our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
A duopolistic party system in a modern capitalist society like the United States will tend to provide a “competition between elites,” which “formulate the issues.” The basics of the political economy are agreed upon by the two parties and are off the table for public debate or discussion.
The poor and even middle class have virtually no influence over their elected representatives. Not so for the wealthy.
Allowing businesses to write off their advertising expenditures as a business expense on their tax returns not only costs the government tens of billions annually in revenues, but also encourages ever greater commercialism in our culture.
If there is a bias in the amount and tenor of coverage, it should be toward those with the least economic and political power.
As journalism subsidies increase, the overall reporting in those nations does not kowtow but in fact grows more adversarial to the government in power.
“The process of brain-washing the public starts with off-the-record briefings for newspapermen,” I.F. Stone wrote.
Technologies, far from relieving workloads, have made it possible for the typical American worker to provide as much as a month and a half of unpaid overtime annually, just by using their smartphones and computers for work at all hours while outside the workplace: “Almost half feel they have no choice.”
Nothing enraged the Internet community more than advertising and commercialism.
The first commercial e-mail message... was flamed by countless Usenet users, meaning that they clogged the advertiser’s inbox with contemptuous messages demanding that the sales pitch be removed and such conduct never be repeated.
In short, the Internet monopolists sit at the commanding heights of U.S. and world capitalism. When Fortune magazine compiled its list of the top twelve entrepreneurs of the past generation, the founders of Internet giants Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google occupied four of the top five slots.
High-tech firms effectively pay a third less in taxes on the same amount of profits as the balance of the U.S. corporate community.
“The best minds of my generation,” an early Facebook employee told The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal, “are thinking about how to make people click ads.”
Only a small number of people are aware, for example, that over half of the roughly 84 data categories Facebook collects about its users are not available for them to see.
It “is a surveillance tool made in heaven,” John Naughton writes, “because much of the surveillance can be done, not by expensive and fallible human beings, but by computers.”
Without meaning to be pejorative or alarmist, it is difficult to avoid noting that what is emerging veers toward a classic definition of fascism.
The journalism crisis has yet to reach the boardroom.
Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times captured the essence of this requirement in his assessment of AOL’s 2011 purchase of the Huffington Post: “To grasp the Huffington Post’s business model, picture a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates.” In the “new-media landscape,” he wrote, “it’s already clear that the merger will push more journalists more deeply into the tragically expanding low-wage sector of our increasingly brutal economy.”
“In the new media,” Rutten concludes, we find “many of the worst abuses of the old economy’s industrial capitalism—the sweatshop, the speedup, and piecework; huge profits for the owners; desperation, drudgery, and exploitation for the workers. No child labor, yet, but if there were more page views in it . . .”
Journatic’s local coverage is provided by low-paid writers and freelancers in the United States and, ironically enough, the Philippines, where Journatic hires writers “able to commit to 250 pieces/week minimum” at 35 to 40 cents a piece.
StatSheet, a subsidiary of Automated Insights, uses algorithms to turn numerical data into narrative articles for its 418 sports websites.
A system that promotes poverty, inequality, waste, and destruction—to the point of making the planet uninhabitable—deserves no free pass from democratic interrogation in the present, whatever its past achievements.
The crisis of our times is that capitalism undermines democracy. The choice we face is whether to expand democracy or let it continue to shrivel: Expanding it requires confronting really existing capitalism head-on. It is the defining issue of our times, the basis for the critical juncture in which we live.
October 23, 2013
I recorded an interview with Professor McChesney after I finished reading this book. You can find that conversation in C-Realm Podcast episode 385: Journalism is a Public Good. http://c-realm.com/podcasts/crealm/38...
September 4, 2016
I think that the general consensus here on Goodreads on this book - as found in the reviews, not in the average score - is correct: it does not add anything, and moreover, the writer's preface suggests a more objective stance than he has.
Having said that, sometimes a summary can be useful. McChesney's modus operandi is to overwhelm the reader with quotes, many of which say the exact same thing in slightly different word order (the notes take up about 1/3 of my ebook). It is almost as if McChesney wants to turn anecdotal evidence into quantitative research by sheer persistence, pounding the reader into accepting the facts. But anecdotal evidence remains anecdotal evidence, and I'm sure it would be possible to write the polar opposite of this argument with a similarly obese collection of annotations.
If that sounds rather more negative, it is, but it's not all McChesney's fault. He does not just quote anecdotal evidence, and there is something nice about the fact that his heart in this (even though he often shows it in rather cynical side comments, instead of a passionate call for action). I generally agree with his point. The internet has become something even more painful than other capitalistic industries, exactly because of the promise inherent in the medium from the start. It reeks of a failed redemption, and that is enough to turn the best optimists cynical.
Maybe that is the biggest problem of this book though. The last chapter does propose some suggestions, but also points out their unlikeliness to ever be put to the attention of politicians, let alone pass Congress. This book is ultimately defeatist. It might be realist as well, but let's suspend that call for at least a few more years. It is only hope that springs eternal, after all.
Having said that, sometimes a summary can be useful. McChesney's modus operandi is to overwhelm the reader with quotes, many of which say the exact same thing in slightly different word order (the notes take up about 1/3 of my ebook). It is almost as if McChesney wants to turn anecdotal evidence into quantitative research by sheer persistence, pounding the reader into accepting the facts. But anecdotal evidence remains anecdotal evidence, and I'm sure it would be possible to write the polar opposite of this argument with a similarly obese collection of annotations.
If that sounds rather more negative, it is, but it's not all McChesney's fault. He does not just quote anecdotal evidence, and there is something nice about the fact that his heart in this (even though he often shows it in rather cynical side comments, instead of a passionate call for action). I generally agree with his point. The internet has become something even more painful than other capitalistic industries, exactly because of the promise inherent in the medium from the start. It reeks of a failed redemption, and that is enough to turn the best optimists cynical.
Maybe that is the biggest problem of this book though. The last chapter does propose some suggestions, but also points out their unlikeliness to ever be put to the attention of politicians, let alone pass Congress. This book is ultimately defeatist. It might be realist as well, but let's suspend that call for at least a few more years. It is only hope that springs eternal, after all.
August 10, 2013
Preface: The author started out with a leftist leaning - giving the impression that he changed his viewpoint, but from the rest of the book, I learned that he still has the same orientation.
Chapter 1 says that the two sides talking about whether the Internet is a positive influence, or a negative influence are talking past each other. In the preface and in chapter 1, he cites lots of other books which presumably have similar concerns. In Goodreads, the other books this author has written all look like they are all on a similar topic.
But, rather than belabor each of the chapters, the point of the book is that Capitalism took over the Internet when advertisers moved in. And as a consequence, professional journalism is going, going, and almost gone. He is especially concerned with the loss of investigative journalism, and of local news reporting.
It's enough to make me itch to support the old style of Journalism by subscribing to two publications that definitely do not see eye-to-eye: The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times.
Chapter 1 says that the two sides talking about whether the Internet is a positive influence, or a negative influence are talking past each other. In the preface and in chapter 1, he cites lots of other books which presumably have similar concerns. In Goodreads, the other books this author has written all look like they are all on a similar topic.
But, rather than belabor each of the chapters, the point of the book is that Capitalism took over the Internet when advertisers moved in. And as a consequence, professional journalism is going, going, and almost gone. He is especially concerned with the loss of investigative journalism, and of local news reporting.
It's enough to make me itch to support the old style of Journalism by subscribing to two publications that definitely do not see eye-to-eye: The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times.
April 10, 2013
McChesney provides here a really great analysis of the history and current ever-expanding role of the internet, as well as internet policy, within the context of the political economy. I read this book while doing research for a paper on open access and copyright law.
He is not really calling for the "end of capitalism" but is suggesting that our current system of capitalism is broken, corrupt and a direct impediment to democracy. These monopolies, absurd copyright/patent laws, and corporate control of government policy have got to go.
I am not very well-read or informed on this subject and really glad I read this book, excellent introduction without being too overwhelming.
He is not really calling for the "end of capitalism" but is suggesting that our current system of capitalism is broken, corrupt and a direct impediment to democracy. These monopolies, absurd copyright/patent laws, and corporate control of government policy have got to go.
I am not very well-read or informed on this subject and really glad I read this book, excellent introduction without being too overwhelming.
May 6, 2013
"The internet" is making some of capitalism' problems worse. From monopolies to the commercialization of our relationships (Facebook ads!), the web epitomizes many problems of our current economic and political systems. McChesney latest book is a good reminder that the global, internet capitalism is not the only way forward, but the past part is when he dissects the current state of journalism. The chapter dedicated to that is the best summarization of all the problems and possible solutions, a must read for all journalist.
July 5, 2013
Unashamedly anti-capitalist this book nonetheless has some fascinating and interesting ideas about how the Internet isn't aiding democracy but how we might change our conceptions of public journalism to challenge corporate capture within the frame of the Internet.
November 5, 2013
excellent presentation on the intertwining of monopoly capitalism, the Internet and the (de)evolution of journalism
November 15, 2013
Digital Disconnect by Robert W. McChesney: MUST READ
October 31, 2013
I don’t often highlight passage after passage in any of my Kindle books – and I rarely buy one after reading most of a print copy – but I bought Robert W. McChesney’s Digital Disconnect after reading most of it, and my copied highlights in 11 point are 21 pages long.
Why? Because I’ve been making one or another form of McChesney’s argument – which is also Michael Moore’s and Chris Hayes’ argument and that of numerous others – all of my adult life – except I never focused on digital technology, my arguments are less polite, and I go farther left in my conclusions. I wouldn’t spend time assuring readers/listeners that I only want to reform capitalism and protect those things, such as education and journalism, which exist for the public good. I’m a socialist, strongly in favor of emulating Denmark’s “lopping off the top.” Like Moore, I would replace capitalism with democracy.
I certainly agree that capitalism undermines democracy, that capitalism in the U.S. and internationally is now monopolistic corporatism, that the U.S. economy is built to sustain the institutions and people at the top, and that the internet and digital technologies can be potent weapons in the hands of either the 1% or the rest of us. I’m probably less optimistic about the future than McChesney, even though he concludes:
Left on their current course and driven by the needs of capital, digital technologies can be deployed in ways that are extraordinarily inimical to freedom, democracy, and anything remotely connected to the good life. Therefore battles over the Internet are of central importance for all those seeking to build a better society. When the dust clears on this critical juncture, if our societies have not been fundamentally transformed for the better, if democracy has not triumphed over capital, the digital revolution may prove to have been a revolution in name only, an ironic, tragic reminder of the growing gap between the potential and the reality of human society. (Kindle Locations 4936-4941).
Throughout the book, McChesney emphasizes the need to resist both the “ritualized chant to the genius of the free market” and the idea that “the internet will necessarily lead to democratic political revolutions worldwide.”
Acknowledging that publicness does threaten “institutions whose power is invested in the control of information and audience,” McChesney cites studies which show that “garbage in, garbage out” remains true. The internet promotes ignorance as much as knowledge; creates a false sense of community and increased loneliness and unhappiness; “routinely generates bogus information, violates people’s privacy and civil rights, and facilitates various forms of harassment.”
Internet searching has become less a tool for discovery and more a way to be locked in a “bubble” which prevents discovery and innovation. Using the internet/digital devices may be decreasing our linear thought process so that we cannot think deeply or creatively, and corroding our ability to remember, which is dangerous because “the art of remembering is the art of thinking.” As Arianna Huffington wrote, “All these new social tools can help us bear witness more powerfully or they can help us be distracted more obsessively.”
To combat the “ritualized chant to the genius of the free market,” McChesney begins by describing the development of capitalism in terms of society’s economic evolution from hunter gatherer, to agricultural society, to mercantile society, to industrial society and the concomitant increase in surplus, which became not just the amount produced above that needed for survival, but capital to invest in order to generate more capital: profit. This makes surplus something not to be consumed, even by the wealthy. “How the surplus is generated and distributed becomes the portfolio of political economy,” he writes.
Capitalism thus tends to increase income inequality exponentially. It also “tends to evolve into monopolistic competition, or oligopoly” and “as a rule the digital era has seen a continued, arguably accelerating, rate of monopoly in the economy.” Capitalism also tends toward an “endless drive to develop new technologies,” whether or not that is rational for the system as a whole, and much of this technology is funded by and for the military and the growing military-digital complex. As McChesney notes, “in addition to inequality, founders saw militarism as contributor to inequality and enemy of democracy.….. ‘No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.’—Madison.”
McChesney also discusses the roles of advertising and public relations in expanding contemporary capitalism’s monopolistic, oligarchical power over and through the media and into the government, at the expense of both privacy and a free press which supports robust investigative journalism. Tax structures and numerous rules and regulations increase and cement corporate power. Copyright law and patent law are especially insidious; instead of protecting the rights of creators for a reasonable amount of time, they protect the ability of corporations to keep information locked away or used only for corporate profit. And the internet giants are now among the most powerful of all corporations.
McChesney concludes that “efforts to reform or replace capitalism but leave the Internet giants riding high will not reform or replace really existing capitalism” because “the Internet giants are not a progressive force. Their massive profits are the result of monopoly privileges, network effects, commercialism, exploited labor, and a number of government policies and subsidies.” He proposes a long list of policies and reforms (Kindle Locations 4609-4622) that “would put the Internet and our society on a very different trajectory” but says that “none of these reforms has a chance” because of political corruption. It’s going to take a political movement, he says, designed to replace capitalism.
October 31, 2013
I don’t often highlight passage after passage in any of my Kindle books – and I rarely buy one after reading most of a print copy – but I bought Robert W. McChesney’s Digital Disconnect after reading most of it, and my copied highlights in 11 point are 21 pages long.
Why? Because I’ve been making one or another form of McChesney’s argument – which is also Michael Moore’s and Chris Hayes’ argument and that of numerous others – all of my adult life – except I never focused on digital technology, my arguments are less polite, and I go farther left in my conclusions. I wouldn’t spend time assuring readers/listeners that I only want to reform capitalism and protect those things, such as education and journalism, which exist for the public good. I’m a socialist, strongly in favor of emulating Denmark’s “lopping off the top.” Like Moore, I would replace capitalism with democracy.
I certainly agree that capitalism undermines democracy, that capitalism in the U.S. and internationally is now monopolistic corporatism, that the U.S. economy is built to sustain the institutions and people at the top, and that the internet and digital technologies can be potent weapons in the hands of either the 1% or the rest of us. I’m probably less optimistic about the future than McChesney, even though he concludes:
Left on their current course and driven by the needs of capital, digital technologies can be deployed in ways that are extraordinarily inimical to freedom, democracy, and anything remotely connected to the good life. Therefore battles over the Internet are of central importance for all those seeking to build a better society. When the dust clears on this critical juncture, if our societies have not been fundamentally transformed for the better, if democracy has not triumphed over capital, the digital revolution may prove to have been a revolution in name only, an ironic, tragic reminder of the growing gap between the potential and the reality of human society. (Kindle Locations 4936-4941).
Throughout the book, McChesney emphasizes the need to resist both the “ritualized chant to the genius of the free market” and the idea that “the internet will necessarily lead to democratic political revolutions worldwide.”
Acknowledging that publicness does threaten “institutions whose power is invested in the control of information and audience,” McChesney cites studies which show that “garbage in, garbage out” remains true. The internet promotes ignorance as much as knowledge; creates a false sense of community and increased loneliness and unhappiness; “routinely generates bogus information, violates people’s privacy and civil rights, and facilitates various forms of harassment.”
Internet searching has become less a tool for discovery and more a way to be locked in a “bubble” which prevents discovery and innovation. Using the internet/digital devices may be decreasing our linear thought process so that we cannot think deeply or creatively, and corroding our ability to remember, which is dangerous because “the art of remembering is the art of thinking.” As Arianna Huffington wrote, “All these new social tools can help us bear witness more powerfully or they can help us be distracted more obsessively.”
To combat the “ritualized chant to the genius of the free market,” McChesney begins by describing the development of capitalism in terms of society’s economic evolution from hunter gatherer, to agricultural society, to mercantile society, to industrial society and the concomitant increase in surplus, which became not just the amount produced above that needed for survival, but capital to invest in order to generate more capital: profit. This makes surplus something not to be consumed, even by the wealthy. “How the surplus is generated and distributed becomes the portfolio of political economy,” he writes.
Capitalism thus tends to increase income inequality exponentially. It also “tends to evolve into monopolistic competition, or oligopoly” and “as a rule the digital era has seen a continued, arguably accelerating, rate of monopoly in the economy.” Capitalism also tends toward an “endless drive to develop new technologies,” whether or not that is rational for the system as a whole, and much of this technology is funded by and for the military and the growing military-digital complex. As McChesney notes, “in addition to inequality, founders saw militarism as contributor to inequality and enemy of democracy.….. ‘No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.’—Madison.”
McChesney also discusses the roles of advertising and public relations in expanding contemporary capitalism’s monopolistic, oligarchical power over and through the media and into the government, at the expense of both privacy and a free press which supports robust investigative journalism. Tax structures and numerous rules and regulations increase and cement corporate power. Copyright law and patent law are especially insidious; instead of protecting the rights of creators for a reasonable amount of time, they protect the ability of corporations to keep information locked away or used only for corporate profit. And the internet giants are now among the most powerful of all corporations.
McChesney concludes that “efforts to reform or replace capitalism but leave the Internet giants riding high will not reform or replace really existing capitalism” because “the Internet giants are not a progressive force. Their massive profits are the result of monopoly privileges, network effects, commercialism, exploited labor, and a number of government policies and subsidies.” He proposes a long list of policies and reforms (Kindle Locations 4609-4622) that “would put the Internet and our society on a very different trajectory” but says that “none of these reforms has a chance” because of political corruption. It’s going to take a political movement, he says, designed to replace capitalism.
March 11, 2020
For McChesney Democracy is the government collecting taxes to pay for his sinecure and a nice house. And somehow you are not paying enough so he could get a bigger house.
September 11, 2013
Interesting book, though the first few chapters are all sociology 101. Talking about capitalism as flawed like this is some huge revelation is really weird to me. Then again, the author's in a different field where that stuff may not be common knowledge, so perhaps it's necessary. Also it's aimed at public policy folks, who may not have gotten the whole "here's why capitalism is bad" speech on day 1. Lots of interesting facts and figures and things, but not exactly what you'd call a fascinating engaging piece of work. McChesney has some major issues with being long-winded in ways that are not productive. I feel like maybe he should fire his editor. Other than that, pretty good internet + capitalism 101 basics type read.
April 11, 2013
There are no new ideas in this book. People who haven't already learned the standard critique of oligopolic corporate power, news about the crisis in journalism, or debates over high-bandwidth Internet deployment and the erosion of privacy on the Internet, the book may be a useful overview. But McChesney is also one-sided. One important exception is his nuanced treatment of journalism, where he recognizes that there are contradictory trends in its history and current remaking. He could have done his readers a service by offering similar multi-faceted views of network neutrality (a vague term that he wisely uses very little) and the place of innovation in capitalism.
February 29, 2016
Just as Naomi Klein's "This Changes Everything" shows us how unregulated capitalism is preventing us from addressing climate change in a meaningful way, this book describes how it's kept the internet and digital technology in general from reaching its full positive social potential. Despite business and government propaganda to the contrary, capitalism not only isn't synonymous with democracy (the political system we need to create a society that works for all), it's antithetical to it.
December 14, 2013
worth reading, but I take issue with a lot of his assumptions about the Internet. My review here.
April 3, 2013
Many good points contained in this book...I think the author could have been more concise. He does raise many concerns that need to be addressed by citizens, media experts, and politicians.
December 14, 2013
A must-read for everybody in the journalism/communications/media professions. Oh, and everyone interested in the future of American democracy.
January 2, 2015
Gives a timeline for the internet development. It could be shorter, but he poses how the internet is lending itself to monopolies.
July 6, 2018
A well researched anodyne to the cheerleaders of techno-libertarians and Silicon Valley
August 8, 2019
Read this in college a couple of years ago. Forgot to review it. In hindsight guess he was right.
August 13, 2021
Although an excellent book and a necessary read in of itself, I do have to knock it down one star for one particular reason: the documentary based on this book, also titled Digital Disconnect, available for free on Hoopla and Kanopy and written, hosted and narrated by author Robert W. McChesney himself. For two reasons: 1.), granted the book (with only 232 pages of actual narrative) is not terribly long, I feel the documentary does a better job of providing the information in a more concise format, and 2.) if nothing else, the fact that the documentary was made during the "Age of Alternative Facts" allows it to provide a massive update and coda of the then-current state of things compared to the now nearly decade-old book.
August 5, 2025
Prof. McChesney’s book provides a useful overview of the political and economic aspects of the digital revolution, but I’m disappointed in the lack of suggestions as to a better way of life with these technologies.
April 16, 2018
Argument could have been tightened up.
Read
September 24, 2021DNF at pages 131.
It's really in-depth and dive deep on the relationship between Internet, Capitalism, and Journalism.
Would rather read a summary for this.
It's really in-depth and dive deep on the relationship between Internet, Capitalism, and Journalism.
Would rather read a summary for this.
January 9, 2014
This book is definitely a grab-bag. There are great parts, there are OK parts, there are bad parts. The facts, charts, and studies concerning the monopolization of ISPs (Internet Service Providers) was revelatory. Amazing. I had no idea before reading this book that the US is behind most developed countries in terms of internet speed because the few ISPs we have in America don't need to upgrade their systems in order to keep their customers. Most customers simply have no choice in who their ISP is, and so they go along with subpar service. As somebody not familiar with these topics already, I was really fascinated by this section in particular.
I found the premise of the book to be a good one, but I feel it could have been executed much better. The first section of the book, which is just laying the groundwork of why capitalism is a flawed system and leads to greater inequality, slogged on for far too long. And I felt the argument of why it's flawed lacked nuance. The author seems to be more interested in vilifying capitalism rather than analyzing it. I myself have no particular fondness for capitalism and think the system could be much improved. The author, however, seems to think that the only way the system can be improved is by completely destroying it, because he believes the system to be more or less evil. But I think it's rather naive and unproductive to view things in black and white, as the author has done.
This vilification on the author's part started out as a tiny crack in his argument, but because his critique of capitalism is the foundation of the book, the crack just gets wider and wider as the book moves on. He applies the same logic to the internet as a whole and argues in almost every line about why the internet is ruining democracy without even entertaining a counterargument for more than a few sentences. I don't think any view of the internet is complete without weighing both the good and the bad. I definitely would have liked to see more complexity in his argument.
The conclusion of the book is the worst part. The author's suggestion to fix the system is simple: revolt! Of course! Why didn't we think of that earlier? The author continues on to say that the US should simply have an entirely new form of government. Easy, right? Once again, I found the author's views to be much too naive and lacking in complexity.
Although I found many of the facts and history that the author brings up about advertising, new media, and monopolization to be very interesting, the argument that they were couched in needed quite a bit of work. I would definitely recommend the section of the book on ISPs, but I'm not sure if the rest of the book would be worth your time.
I found the premise of the book to be a good one, but I feel it could have been executed much better. The first section of the book, which is just laying the groundwork of why capitalism is a flawed system and leads to greater inequality, slogged on for far too long. And I felt the argument of why it's flawed lacked nuance. The author seems to be more interested in vilifying capitalism rather than analyzing it. I myself have no particular fondness for capitalism and think the system could be much improved. The author, however, seems to think that the only way the system can be improved is by completely destroying it, because he believes the system to be more or less evil. But I think it's rather naive and unproductive to view things in black and white, as the author has done.
This vilification on the author's part started out as a tiny crack in his argument, but because his critique of capitalism is the foundation of the book, the crack just gets wider and wider as the book moves on. He applies the same logic to the internet as a whole and argues in almost every line about why the internet is ruining democracy without even entertaining a counterargument for more than a few sentences. I don't think any view of the internet is complete without weighing both the good and the bad. I definitely would have liked to see more complexity in his argument.
The conclusion of the book is the worst part. The author's suggestion to fix the system is simple: revolt! Of course! Why didn't we think of that earlier? The author continues on to say that the US should simply have an entirely new form of government. Easy, right? Once again, I found the author's views to be much too naive and lacking in complexity.
Although I found many of the facts and history that the author brings up about advertising, new media, and monopolization to be very interesting, the argument that they were couched in needed quite a bit of work. I would definitely recommend the section of the book on ISPs, but I'm not sure if the rest of the book would be worth your time.
Read
August 12, 2015http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2013/0...
Review by Greg Macdougall
Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy discusses how politics and the "capitalist*" economic system of the United States has very much warped the initial vision and potential of a non-commercial democratic Internet. In it noted scholar and activist Robert W. McChesney does a good job of illustrating the "banana republic" -- that is the corporately-controlled -- status of the U.S. state.
Beyond just communication media, McChesney describes how for the overall society, "what is emerging veers toward a classic definition of fascism: the state and large corporations working hand in hand to promote corporate interests, and a state preoccupied with militarism, secrecy, propaganda and surveillance." And this understanding of U.S. society is very important in understanding the business of the Internet.
McChesney cites a scene from The Godfather II where the gangsters meet to divide up their control of Cuba and then show their appreciation for how nice it is to be working in a country "with a friendly government that knows how to work with 'private enterprise'" -- this, McChesney says, is an apt analogy showing the true nature of who controls the Internet and the trend of continuing (and increased) consolidation of this control.
Read more here: http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2013/0...
Review by Greg Macdougall
Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy discusses how politics and the "capitalist*" economic system of the United States has very much warped the initial vision and potential of a non-commercial democratic Internet. In it noted scholar and activist Robert W. McChesney does a good job of illustrating the "banana republic" -- that is the corporately-controlled -- status of the U.S. state.
Beyond just communication media, McChesney describes how for the overall society, "what is emerging veers toward a classic definition of fascism: the state and large corporations working hand in hand to promote corporate interests, and a state preoccupied with militarism, secrecy, propaganda and surveillance." And this understanding of U.S. society is very important in understanding the business of the Internet.
McChesney cites a scene from The Godfather II where the gangsters meet to divide up their control of Cuba and then show their appreciation for how nice it is to be working in a country "with a friendly government that knows how to work with 'private enterprise'" -- this, McChesney says, is an apt analogy showing the true nature of who controls the Internet and the trend of continuing (and increased) consolidation of this control.
Read more here: http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2013/0...
December 8, 2014
Simply put, as a 24 year old English/Education major, I have arrived at the conclusion that I am not within McChesney's target demographic for this book. Although meticulously written, I was disappointed to find that the information found in Digital Disconnect was not brand new to me - however, this is not to say that this wouldn't be fascinating to someone who perhaps didn't grow up with the internet. Although this particular book failed to resonate with me, I'm not ruling out other books from McChesney, as even though I found him to be a bit dry, his stuff was meticulously well researched and written.
April 21, 2014
If you're familiar with political economy of communication lit (& McChesney) there's really nothing new here. Offers a critique of capitalism & discusses the consequences commercialized media have on society. I did like the chapters on the big internet companies (e.g. Google, ISPs, Amazon, Facebook) & their relationship to advertising; more descriptive than analytical but I learned some things. His suggestions at the end are interesting, although (as he admits) unlikely in current political environment.
May 6, 2015
I had to read this book for class. I absolutely hated it. I felt like the author wanted me to wear my tinfoil hat to keep the government rays out. Maybe it was supposed to be shocking? If so, it wasn't. Oh, and it had nothing, in my opinion, about disconnecting digitally. What a horrible book.
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