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Our Biggest Fight: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The internet as we know it is broken. Here’s how we can seize back control of our lives from the corporate algorithms and create a better internet—before it’s too late.
“In the spirit of Thomas Paine’s Revolution-era Common Sense, this manifesto challenges us to create new digital architectures to safeguard democracy.”—Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Elon Musk
It was once a utopian dream. But today’s internet, despite its conveniences and connectivity, is the primary cause of a pervasive unease that has taken hold in the U.S. and other democratic societies. It’s why youth suicide rates are rising, why politics has become toxic, and why our most important institutions are faltering.
Information is the lifeblood of any society, and our current system for distributing it is corrupted at its heart. Everything comes down to our ability to communicate openly and trustfully with each other. But, thanks to the dominant digital platforms and the ways they distort human behavior, we have lost that ability—while, at the same time, we’ve been robbed of the data that is rightfully ours.
The roots of this crisis, argue Frank McCourt and Michael Casey, lie in the prevailing order of the internet. In plain but forceful language, the authors—a civic entrepreneur and an acclaimed journalist—show how a centralized system controlled by a small group of for-profit entities has set this catastrophe in motion and eroded our personhood.
And then they describe a groundbreaking solution to reclaim rather than superficial, patchwork regulations, we must reimagine the very architecture of the internet. The resulting “third-generation internet” would replace the status quo with a new model marked by digital property rights, autonomy, and ownership.
Inspired by historical calls to action like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, Our Biggest Fight argues that we must act now to embed the core values of a free, democratic society in the internet of tomorrow. Do it right and we will finally, properly, unlock its immense potential.
“In the spirit of Thomas Paine’s Revolution-era Common Sense, this manifesto challenges us to create new digital architectures to safeguard democracy.”—Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Elon Musk
It was once a utopian dream. But today’s internet, despite its conveniences and connectivity, is the primary cause of a pervasive unease that has taken hold in the U.S. and other democratic societies. It’s why youth suicide rates are rising, why politics has become toxic, and why our most important institutions are faltering.
Information is the lifeblood of any society, and our current system for distributing it is corrupted at its heart. Everything comes down to our ability to communicate openly and trustfully with each other. But, thanks to the dominant digital platforms and the ways they distort human behavior, we have lost that ability—while, at the same time, we’ve been robbed of the data that is rightfully ours.
The roots of this crisis, argue Frank McCourt and Michael Casey, lie in the prevailing order of the internet. In plain but forceful language, the authors—a civic entrepreneur and an acclaimed journalist—show how a centralized system controlled by a small group of for-profit entities has set this catastrophe in motion and eroded our personhood.
And then they describe a groundbreaking solution to reclaim rather than superficial, patchwork regulations, we must reimagine the very architecture of the internet. The resulting “third-generation internet” would replace the status quo with a new model marked by digital property rights, autonomy, and ownership.
Inspired by historical calls to action like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, Our Biggest Fight argues that we must act now to embed the core values of a free, democratic society in the internet of tomorrow. Do it right and we will finally, properly, unlock its immense potential.
209 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 12, 2024
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44 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 15, 2024
Easy read and thought provoking. Never thought of social media in the terms the author lays out. Definitely made me reconsider the influence of social media on society and how it’s past time for a revolution in the infrastructure of the internet to give people the right to autonomy in how we share our identities with the corporations who control the internet.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 17, 2024
Timely and Timeworthy Read.
Thank you for the historical context, why agency of our data matters and providing a summary of actions we all can consider. My thoughts remain with families who have lost loved ones.
Thank you for the historical context, why agency of our data matters and providing a summary of actions we all can consider. My thoughts remain with families who have lost loved ones.
November 30, 2024
Should be required reading, not only for all users of social platforms, but for anyone who prizes individuality and freedom and wants to understand what is happening that is disowning us of our personal information and life stories, and what we need do to stop it, now.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews