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Untangling the Web: What the internet is doing to you
The World Wide Web is the most revolutionary innovation of our time. In the last decade, it has utterly transformed our lives. But what real effects is it having on our social world?
What does it mean to be a modern family when dinner table conversations take place over smartphones? What happens to privacy when we readily share our personal lives with friends and corporations? Are our Facebook updates and Twitterings inspiring revolution or are they just a symptom of our global narcissism? What counts as celebrity, when everyone can have a following or be a paparazzo? And what happens to relationships when love, sex and hate can be mediated by a computer?
Social psychologist Aleks Krotoski has spent a decade untangling the effects of the Web on how we work, live and play. In this groundbreaking book, she uncovers how much humanity has - and hasn't - changed because of our increasingly co-dependent relationship with the computer. In Untangling the Web, she tells the story of how the network became woven in our lives, and what it means to be alive in the age of the Internet.
What does it mean to be a modern family when dinner table conversations take place over smartphones? What happens to privacy when we readily share our personal lives with friends and corporations? Are our Facebook updates and Twitterings inspiring revolution or are they just a symptom of our global narcissism? What counts as celebrity, when everyone can have a following or be a paparazzo? And what happens to relationships when love, sex and hate can be mediated by a computer?
Social psychologist Aleks Krotoski has spent a decade untangling the effects of the Web on how we work, live and play. In this groundbreaking book, she uncovers how much humanity has - and hasn't - changed because of our increasingly co-dependent relationship with the computer. In Untangling the Web, she tells the story of how the network became woven in our lives, and what it means to be alive in the age of the Internet.
224 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 28, 2012
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255 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
November 30, 2016
One thing the internet is definitely doing to me is encouraging me to read more books in general and, specifically, more books about What The Internet Is Doing To Us. I doubt that in aggregate I read more than I did before I used the internet, but it has definitely allowed me to become more selective. As a teenager, I used to wander around libraries and second hand bookshops choosing books off the shelves almost at random. I don’t regret that, however two of the first things I ever used the internet for were finding book recommendations and keeping an online To Read list (on amazon, as the year was 2001). I mention this as I was already skeptical about ‘the internet is killing our ability to concentrate long enough to read a book!’ panic. In ‘Untangling the Web’, Krotoski is mainly doing damage control, reassuring the reader that there is no evidence of the internet causing neurological problems or addiction (although those predisposed to addiction may use the internet in a compulsive way) or other terrible things the media periodically claims.
As a consequence of this reactive emphasis and the book’s limited length, it struck me as rather superficial. Perhaps because I’ve read most of it before, in books like It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, and Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. Krotoski tries to cover a vast amount of material, so this was perhaps inevitable. The most original and unsettling chapter concerned the internet's impact on our attitudes to death and grief. That issue deserves a long book to itself. The chapters on relationships online were concise and sensible, but nothing ground-breaking. I was mildly irritated by Krotoski’s complaints that internet dating is antithetical to ‘romance’, without defining what she thinks romance is. (It is a remarkably under-discussed term, as if it has an immutable meaning that everyone automatically, instinctively knows.) The chapter on hate online is especially brief and unenlightening, as it doesn’t go into the phenomenon of immediate polarised reactions to events that social media facilitates and normalises. There are some well-judged points about privacy, though. Overall, the book is a good enough synthesis but doesn’t add much. Perhaps Krotoski was trying to write something as accessible as possible, which resulted in a (to me) unsatisfactory flimsiness.
As a consequence of this reactive emphasis and the book’s limited length, it struck me as rather superficial. Perhaps because I’ve read most of it before, in books like It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, and Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. Krotoski tries to cover a vast amount of material, so this was perhaps inevitable. The most original and unsettling chapter concerned the internet's impact on our attitudes to death and grief. That issue deserves a long book to itself. The chapters on relationships online were concise and sensible, but nothing ground-breaking. I was mildly irritated by Krotoski’s complaints that internet dating is antithetical to ‘romance’, without defining what she thinks romance is. (It is a remarkably under-discussed term, as if it has an immutable meaning that everyone automatically, instinctively knows.) The chapter on hate online is especially brief and unenlightening, as it doesn’t go into the phenomenon of immediate polarised reactions to events that social media facilitates and normalises. There are some well-judged points about privacy, though. Overall, the book is a good enough synthesis but doesn’t add much. Perhaps Krotoski was trying to write something as accessible as possible, which resulted in a (to me) unsatisfactory flimsiness.
May 7, 2022
I heard the author's program on BBC and added her book to my reading list - a book that was very hard to find here in the US.
This is a survey of many topics related to our use of the internet - from search to connection to social interactions and more. In many of the short chapters, the author highlights information from a book or article, and these sources are listed in the extensive bibliography.
When I finally found a copy to read, I found a portion of the content was out of date, and all of it insufficient. I am reminded of a podcast or discussion program, and this connects back to the author's other work at the BBC. Had I read this ten years ago when it was first published, I think it would have been 3 or maybe 4 stars. Today, the bibliography is still an excellent starting point, but I can't recommend the whole.
This is a survey of many topics related to our use of the internet - from search to connection to social interactions and more. In many of the short chapters, the author highlights information from a book or article, and these sources are listed in the extensive bibliography.
When I finally found a copy to read, I found a portion of the content was out of date, and all of it insufficient. I am reminded of a podcast or discussion program, and this connects back to the author's other work at the BBC. Had I read this ten years ago when it was first published, I think it would have been 3 or maybe 4 stars. Today, the bibliography is still an excellent starting point, but I can't recommend the whole.
June 29, 2020
Very relevant. Recommended.
November 18, 2014
In Untangling The Web, Aleks presents some of the most burning questions about the relationship of an individual, a community, a society and the population (in it’s broadest sense), and The Web. Although Aleks debunks several myths and answers a few questions, more questions remain open and provoke the reader to think. The book is rather thin, well written and concise, although I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s an easy read. Regardless, I highly recommend it to everyone who is interested in impacts the internet (but mainly the web) has on us and on our futures.
I was mainly intrigued by these topics
* Our activity on social networks does not define who we are, it’s just a slice of us. Creators of algorithms / personalised services have to understand it.
* The ability to stay anonymous on the web is very controversial; on one hand it provides the healthy ability to form personality by adopting different versions of self in different online contexts, on the other hand it reduces the threshold of antisocial behaviour
* The ability to adopt different identities and to disappear was intrinsic to web and is quickly disappearing; what we can lose and gain? Is it a question of authenticity versus freedom? How do we define a personality, self and identity online? Are we who we are in the real world, or are we more aspirational? Is anonymity allowing to become people who we always wanted to be?
* "the web is an instant gratification engine”; the attention span is getting shorter; the way the adults consume and process information is being reduced to a super-simplistic reactions "reduces their understanding of it to either ‘Yuck!' or ‘Wow!’”
* We’re remembering less, and we are offloading our cognitive processes and memory to the web; however we don’t utilise the freed-up cognitive resources but instead we fill them with consumption of online cat videos
* Communities are build around “social capital”, a combination trust in institutions and others, based on reputation
* "A community rich in social capital believes in volunteering, in looking out for one another, in caring for members of the community who are less able, in doing things that may not have immediate individual value, but ultimately allow the collective to thrive. Without social capital, our communities would fall apart: we wouldn’t know who was reliable and who’d rob us blind.”
* Facebooks ‘Like’ helps individuals to build reputation within their communities; they demonstrate that they belong to the group, the ‘Like’ is a “badge of honour”
* The current social networks like Twitter don’t foster deeper relationships because they were not designed for that, instead they serve the purpose of acquiring most ‘friends’ or ‘followers’
I was mainly intrigued by these topics
* Our activity on social networks does not define who we are, it’s just a slice of us. Creators of algorithms / personalised services have to understand it.
* The ability to stay anonymous on the web is very controversial; on one hand it provides the healthy ability to form personality by adopting different versions of self in different online contexts, on the other hand it reduces the threshold of antisocial behaviour
* The ability to adopt different identities and to disappear was intrinsic to web and is quickly disappearing; what we can lose and gain? Is it a question of authenticity versus freedom? How do we define a personality, self and identity online? Are we who we are in the real world, or are we more aspirational? Is anonymity allowing to become people who we always wanted to be?
* "the web is an instant gratification engine”; the attention span is getting shorter; the way the adults consume and process information is being reduced to a super-simplistic reactions "reduces their understanding of it to either ‘Yuck!' or ‘Wow!’”
* We’re remembering less, and we are offloading our cognitive processes and memory to the web; however we don’t utilise the freed-up cognitive resources but instead we fill them with consumption of online cat videos
* Communities are build around “social capital”, a combination trust in institutions and others, based on reputation
* "A community rich in social capital believes in volunteering, in looking out for one another, in caring for members of the community who are less able, in doing things that may not have immediate individual value, but ultimately allow the collective to thrive. Without social capital, our communities would fall apart: we wouldn’t know who was reliable and who’d rob us blind.”
* Facebooks ‘Like’ helps individuals to build reputation within their communities; they demonstrate that they belong to the group, the ‘Like’ is a “badge of honour”
* The current social networks like Twitter don’t foster deeper relationships because they were not designed for that, instead they serve the purpose of acquiring most ‘friends’ or ‘followers’
July 24, 2016
As a note of disclosure, Aleks is my friend and so my thoughts on the book will obviously have some bias in them. I'd like to say otherwise, but that simply wouldn't be true. That said:
As a long-time technophile, I experienced two reactions while reading the book: I wasn't surprised by the findings, but I found the book at its most compelling when Aleks explored the science behind what I "believed" I already knew. That's a deft writing trick, writing for a general audience while introducing enough geeky science to keep me interested.
If I was describing its audience for this book, I'd say this was for people who were interested in the Web and concerned about what it was doing to us because of the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that appears so often in Big Media writing. I'd happily give this to my mom on Friday, and expect that she'd have read it by Sunday night. (I say that as my mother is a voracious reader, and is interested in why things are the way they are.)
The book is a series of essays that deconstruct the concerns people express about technology in general and the Web in specific. It's divided into four parts -- Untangling Me, Untangling Us, Untangling Society, and Untangling the Future -- each of which explores individual ideas that you've heard people discuss. Without pandering or writing down to the reader, Aleks weaves short, personal anecdotes with social science to explore the what we know and what we don't know about the Web.
When I wrote for Wired many years ago, I often found myself debating with those who felt technology was bringing ruin to our society. As such, I found the "Untangling Us" section, which includes essays on sex, kids on the Internet, friends in social networks, dating, and hate groups, the most compelling. Aleks approaches each with an even hand, exploring the issues in great depth but always with an eye on the practical experience of the reader.
That narrative approach is not an easy task. Writers such as Malcolm Gladwell have sacrificed the science for narrative, painting pictures that don't mesh with what we know. Aleks is a trained scientist and a writer, though, and her knowledge of both the science and the narrative structures are apparent. The writing is lively and thought-provoking.
If you're interesting in understanding why you feel the way you do about the Web and its social nature, pick up Untangling the Web. You'll understand the digital world around you just a little bit better.
As a long-time technophile, I experienced two reactions while reading the book: I wasn't surprised by the findings, but I found the book at its most compelling when Aleks explored the science behind what I "believed" I already knew. That's a deft writing trick, writing for a general audience while introducing enough geeky science to keep me interested.
If I was describing its audience for this book, I'd say this was for people who were interested in the Web and concerned about what it was doing to us because of the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that appears so often in Big Media writing. I'd happily give this to my mom on Friday, and expect that she'd have read it by Sunday night. (I say that as my mother is a voracious reader, and is interested in why things are the way they are.)
The book is a series of essays that deconstruct the concerns people express about technology in general and the Web in specific. It's divided into four parts -- Untangling Me, Untangling Us, Untangling Society, and Untangling the Future -- each of which explores individual ideas that you've heard people discuss. Without pandering or writing down to the reader, Aleks weaves short, personal anecdotes with social science to explore the what we know and what we don't know about the Web.
When I wrote for Wired many years ago, I often found myself debating with those who felt technology was bringing ruin to our society. As such, I found the "Untangling Us" section, which includes essays on sex, kids on the Internet, friends in social networks, dating, and hate groups, the most compelling. Aleks approaches each with an even hand, exploring the issues in great depth but always with an eye on the practical experience of the reader.
That narrative approach is not an easy task. Writers such as Malcolm Gladwell have sacrificed the science for narrative, painting pictures that don't mesh with what we know. Aleks is a trained scientist and a writer, though, and her knowledge of both the science and the narrative structures are apparent. The writing is lively and thought-provoking.
If you're interesting in understanding why you feel the way you do about the Web and its social nature, pick up Untangling the Web. You'll understand the digital world around you just a little bit better.
October 21, 2013
Untangling the Web is a timely and detailed account of how the internet is changing us, and what we can do about it.
The book makes very good points about the different identities we have online, and also about the way things are changing as the anonymity of the early days of the web gets eroded, and past identities become harder to erase. It’s great on the privacy implications of the web, how much people share online and how much other information can easily be discovered. And there’s also a good discussion of the way the internet filters what you see based on the information that companies are building up based on your past usage:
"The commercial services that dominate the digital world – the Googles and the Facebooks – are trying to keep us brand-loyal by delivering services that meet our needs, so they confirm our biases by telling us things that we already want to hear."
This is a fascinating area, covered in more detail by Eli Pariser’s The Filter Bubble. If you and I both Google “climate change”, we’ll get different results, and the results we see will likely reinforce our existing opinions. While it makes sense for the search companies to try to make our results more relevant, you can see the dangers of such an approach. As Krotoski puts it, “The vast ocean of information online is increasingly navigated by packs of like-minded people who really only see a little slice of what is available on the web.” I’m not sure what a slice of an ocean looks like, but you get the point.
Krotoski returns to the point in a later chapter looking at extremism. The effect of what she calls “cyberbalkanization” is often pluralistic ignorance – the belief that everyone else thinks as we do. This is reinforced by the tribes of self-reinforcing believers that spring up, and can lead to more extreme views, as you are influenced by those around you.
The main strength of Untangling the Web is that it presents very serious, sometimes terrifying information, but never becomes hysterical or deliberately ratchets up the fear. Instead, she usually presents us with something we can do about it, or a reason why it doesn’t matter so much. Krotoski wants to show us the effects of the internet, not to scare us with a doomsday scenario, but to enable us to take control of it and make it better.
For example, she tells us about “cyberchondria”, the tendency for people to self-diagnose on the internet and make a headache into a brain tumour. Then she gives the more disturbing example of online support communities normalising self-destructive behaviour, such as the pro-ana community which “exacerbates the eating disorder anorexia nervosa by giving its members a place to share anything from tips and tricks for hiding weight loss from loved ones or doctors to ‘thinspiration’ photos of emaciated women.” But then she balances this out with an account of some of the positive effects of providing more trusted health information on the internet.
For a book that professes to untangle the web, the organisation is not always very easy to follow. The overall four-section structure makes sense: “Untangling Me” is about our own minds and bodies, “Untangling Us” looks at family and friendship, “Untangling Society” examines the larger social implications, and “Untangling the Future” is about future directions. But the trouble is that there’s a lot of overlap in these categories – it’s hard to separate out . The result is that things sometimes get a bit tangled. I should confess, though, that it might be me – I read this book on Kindle, and have noticed that I’ve had similar trouble with a few non-fiction e-books lately. No idea why, but it seems harder to keep track of the structure than it is with paper books.
The other problem I had with the book was the occasional use of the “straw man” technique, presenting breathless newspaper headlines as the representative of criticisms or fears over the web’s influence, and then arguing that things are not that bad. For example:
"A headline you read on the front page screaming “Internet ‘terror breeding ground’” is actually terrifying. It implies that the web eradicates morality. But how real is this threat? Or is it just tapping into a public fear in order to sell copies?"
To me, this misses the point. Yes, of course tabloid headlines are sensationalist and over-hyped, but what about more intelligent critiques? Wouldn’t it be more interesting to engage with them?
A similar thing happens sometimes with books, for example Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, in which apparently “he says we’re using our minds less than ever before because it’s so easy to find information”. That wasn’t the book I remember reading at all – I thought he was saying that the way we use our minds on the internet is different, and leads to different patterns of thought – more attuned to finding information quickly, and less attuned to deep reading and contemplation. Things like that chipped away at my trust of the author’s judgement, and made me question whether the representations of other books or arguments were accurate.
Despite these reservations, though, I’d definitely recommend reading Untangling the Web. It’s a lively and interesting introduction to the huge range of changes that are happening as we shift from a predominantly private to an increasingly public way of life. Despite the way the cover shouts “What the internet is doing to YOU”, the author presents a balanced view and never subscribes to hyperbole or fear-mongering. Her ultimate philosophy is that we shouldn’t be scared of the internet, but should be aware of what is going on and take control of it ourselves:
"The problem we’re grappling with is that we are too tangled up in the web, experiencing the social and psychological evolutions as they happen. We’re so fearful of what it will do to us and our institutions, that we forget that we have the power to shape it ourselves."
The book makes very good points about the different identities we have online, and also about the way things are changing as the anonymity of the early days of the web gets eroded, and past identities become harder to erase. It’s great on the privacy implications of the web, how much people share online and how much other information can easily be discovered. And there’s also a good discussion of the way the internet filters what you see based on the information that companies are building up based on your past usage:
"The commercial services that dominate the digital world – the Googles and the Facebooks – are trying to keep us brand-loyal by delivering services that meet our needs, so they confirm our biases by telling us things that we already want to hear."
This is a fascinating area, covered in more detail by Eli Pariser’s The Filter Bubble. If you and I both Google “climate change”, we’ll get different results, and the results we see will likely reinforce our existing opinions. While it makes sense for the search companies to try to make our results more relevant, you can see the dangers of such an approach. As Krotoski puts it, “The vast ocean of information online is increasingly navigated by packs of like-minded people who really only see a little slice of what is available on the web.” I’m not sure what a slice of an ocean looks like, but you get the point.
Krotoski returns to the point in a later chapter looking at extremism. The effect of what she calls “cyberbalkanization” is often pluralistic ignorance – the belief that everyone else thinks as we do. This is reinforced by the tribes of self-reinforcing believers that spring up, and can lead to more extreme views, as you are influenced by those around you.
The main strength of Untangling the Web is that it presents very serious, sometimes terrifying information, but never becomes hysterical or deliberately ratchets up the fear. Instead, she usually presents us with something we can do about it, or a reason why it doesn’t matter so much. Krotoski wants to show us the effects of the internet, not to scare us with a doomsday scenario, but to enable us to take control of it and make it better.
For example, she tells us about “cyberchondria”, the tendency for people to self-diagnose on the internet and make a headache into a brain tumour. Then she gives the more disturbing example of online support communities normalising self-destructive behaviour, such as the pro-ana community which “exacerbates the eating disorder anorexia nervosa by giving its members a place to share anything from tips and tricks for hiding weight loss from loved ones or doctors to ‘thinspiration’ photos of emaciated women.” But then she balances this out with an account of some of the positive effects of providing more trusted health information on the internet.
For a book that professes to untangle the web, the organisation is not always very easy to follow. The overall four-section structure makes sense: “Untangling Me” is about our own minds and bodies, “Untangling Us” looks at family and friendship, “Untangling Society” examines the larger social implications, and “Untangling the Future” is about future directions. But the trouble is that there’s a lot of overlap in these categories – it’s hard to separate out . The result is that things sometimes get a bit tangled. I should confess, though, that it might be me – I read this book on Kindle, and have noticed that I’ve had similar trouble with a few non-fiction e-books lately. No idea why, but it seems harder to keep track of the structure than it is with paper books.
The other problem I had with the book was the occasional use of the “straw man” technique, presenting breathless newspaper headlines as the representative of criticisms or fears over the web’s influence, and then arguing that things are not that bad. For example:
"A headline you read on the front page screaming “Internet ‘terror breeding ground’” is actually terrifying. It implies that the web eradicates morality. But how real is this threat? Or is it just tapping into a public fear in order to sell copies?"
To me, this misses the point. Yes, of course tabloid headlines are sensationalist and over-hyped, but what about more intelligent critiques? Wouldn’t it be more interesting to engage with them?
A similar thing happens sometimes with books, for example Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, in which apparently “he says we’re using our minds less than ever before because it’s so easy to find information”. That wasn’t the book I remember reading at all – I thought he was saying that the way we use our minds on the internet is different, and leads to different patterns of thought – more attuned to finding information quickly, and less attuned to deep reading and contemplation. Things like that chipped away at my trust of the author’s judgement, and made me question whether the representations of other books or arguments were accurate.
Despite these reservations, though, I’d definitely recommend reading Untangling the Web. It’s a lively and interesting introduction to the huge range of changes that are happening as we shift from a predominantly private to an increasingly public way of life. Despite the way the cover shouts “What the internet is doing to YOU”, the author presents a balanced view and never subscribes to hyperbole or fear-mongering. Her ultimate philosophy is that we shouldn’t be scared of the internet, but should be aware of what is going on and take control of it ourselves:
"The problem we’re grappling with is that we are too tangled up in the web, experiencing the social and psychological evolutions as they happen. We’re so fearful of what it will do to us and our institutions, that we forget that we have the power to shape it ourselves."
February 27, 2021
Untangling the Web is a very interesting look into how the Internet is effecting our lives, though quite a lot if it is now outdated due to the pace at which the Internet and our usage of it has progressed and evolved. The concepts are still relevant, but just bear in mind when reading that conclusions, opinions, and thoughts are based on now outdated information.
March 24, 2020
A really great book that tackles the difficult topic of how the internet affects people. A lot of folk-psychology focuses on this and it is really nice to see something with a more rigorous approach.
August 2, 2021
I can't say any of it is new to me but I've been reading Aleks' journalism for years and listening to The Digital Human. It served as a useful reminder to consider how my life and technology interact. Aleks is great company and frightening how fast I heard her voice when I started to read.
Read
May 18, 2024We need to assess the new tools that we’re using before it damages society, or merely to maximize its capabilities. This book helps with just that. Stop and think!
May 10, 2015
"Difference is inspiring, catalysing and progressive. Social psychological research over six decades has found that inward-looking groups, online or off, will have less tolerance for the other. They're more antagonistic, confrontational and bigoted. In other words, because of the way the web helps us form strong online communities - the like-mindedness, the friendships, the social capital - and because of the way technology encourages this by filtering out difference, the way we currently navigate the online world may result in social division instead of social cohesion" - page 62.
Untangling the Web is a solid dose of sanity in its concise dissection of the web, our attitudes towards the web and how our entangled relationship with the web is changing our lives.
Drawn from 13 years of research the book demonstrates why the reader should always be highly sceptical of the media's reporting of the negative effects of of our usage of the web and why we should be a little more critical in regards to how easily we are immersing our identities within the still very young and simplistic web matrix.
While this book does draw heavily on a wide array of academic research and disciplines, it is presented in a quick read form that is easily accessible to anyone, which is just as well considering that this is a book every web user (human being) should have a flick through.
The web can bring about great human growth and there are still more web innovations to come, but, as the examples in the book demonstrate time and time again, the web is a highly manipulatable entity and, in these primitive days of its increasingly rapid expansion, we should still proceed with caution, we're only human after all.
Untangling the Web is a solid dose of sanity in its concise dissection of the web, our attitudes towards the web and how our entangled relationship with the web is changing our lives.
Drawn from 13 years of research the book demonstrates why the reader should always be highly sceptical of the media's reporting of the negative effects of of our usage of the web and why we should be a little more critical in regards to how easily we are immersing our identities within the still very young and simplistic web matrix.
While this book does draw heavily on a wide array of academic research and disciplines, it is presented in a quick read form that is easily accessible to anyone, which is just as well considering that this is a book every web user (human being) should have a flick through.
The web can bring about great human growth and there are still more web innovations to come, but, as the examples in the book demonstrate time and time again, the web is a highly manipulatable entity and, in these primitive days of its increasingly rapid expansion, we should still proceed with caution, we're only human after all.
September 19, 2013
It's not difficult to find a book about the effects of the digital age on our lives, and how the web of our online and offline lives is being woven tighter and tighter. But it is tricky to find one that presents a balance of the positives along with the negatives, and that covers those impacts across all aspects of 'life'.
Aleks doesn't go into unnecessary depth about any of the areas she covers, but gives no nonsense relatable insights over a wide range of the points in life than online and offline are increasingly overlapping: finding love, harbouring hatred, politics, privacy, home-life, education and even medicine.
It reads like a collection of introductory paragraphs from an essay (which isn't surprising as Aleks took much of the content from her PHD)which makes the information digestable and logical - but if you're not sold on the subject matter you won't feel compelled to read on. There are a couple of spelling and grammar blunders; but we won't hold that against this book.
Highlights for me: Krotski's exploration of how the internet and online communities are revolutionising sex&pornography; and how journalism has evolved (or hasn't in some cases) to accomodate the 'everyone is a reporter' scenario that social media encourages.
Despite the subtitle of the book, "What the internet is doing to you", this book makes it clear that what we ought to be considering instead is 'what does what we're doing online say about us' and 'what does it mean'
Aleks doesn't go into unnecessary depth about any of the areas she covers, but gives no nonsense relatable insights over a wide range of the points in life than online and offline are increasingly overlapping: finding love, harbouring hatred, politics, privacy, home-life, education and even medicine.
It reads like a collection of introductory paragraphs from an essay (which isn't surprising as Aleks took much of the content from her PHD)which makes the information digestable and logical - but if you're not sold on the subject matter you won't feel compelled to read on. There are a couple of spelling and grammar blunders; but we won't hold that against this book.
Highlights for me: Krotski's exploration of how the internet and online communities are revolutionising sex&pornography; and how journalism has evolved (or hasn't in some cases) to accomodate the 'everyone is a reporter' scenario that social media encourages.
Despite the subtitle of the book, "What the internet is doing to you", this book makes it clear that what we ought to be considering instead is 'what does what we're doing online say about us' and 'what does it mean'
June 10, 2016
A well researched book offering much insight into why we do the things that we do online, and whether or not we should be concerned about it. The author collates conclusions from a broad range of research into human behavior while connected to the web. I found myself questioning many of my own assumptions about online behavior previously gleaned from what is rightfully pointed out as 'sensational' reporting by the general media, usually laden with emotional trigger words designed to catch our attention, but which rarely leave us with a rounded view.
May 15, 2015
Lively, interesting, easy to read style.
Cuts through the alarmist opinions and gets down to surveyed facts.
She ends with ...
'Rather than asking , "What is the web doing to us?" as individuals, as communities and as a society ... We should be asking two other questions:
"What does what we're doing online say about us?" and "What does it mean?"'
Cuts through the alarmist opinions and gets down to surveyed facts.
She ends with ...
'Rather than asking , "What is the web doing to us?" as individuals, as communities and as a society ... We should be asking two other questions:
"What does what we're doing online say about us?" and "What does it mean?"'
January 13, 2015
It took me a year to get through this. There was something slightly superficial about its contents. If you've clicked a lot of links on Facebook, you've probably read the same studies the author mentions. However, I still think the author is excellent, and the quality of writing was exceptional: clear and relatable. For Internet beginners.
March 10, 2015
This is a decent and somewhat thoughtful read that's already a bit out of date. I was hoping for something more detailed and insightful but really read little that I hadn't already heard or thought of. Then again I'm geekier than the average reader perhaps and others may glean more from it than I did.
November 13, 2013
Thoughtful exploration of how the internet is changing different areas of social life. Asks a lot of interesting questions from a social psychology perspective without claiming to have all the answers.
December 17, 2015
I am not a book critic. But I found this book informative and illuminating. Worth reading especially if you are witness to the transition from a world which was introduced to the internet to the word which has become a world where cyber-communication is the default mode of communication.
August 6, 2013
A fairly good book, shame about the typos and some and grammar. Found lots of sections really interesting but others really short, and the end of the book feels rushed, with no real conclusion.
May 1, 2014
It's a books full of interesting information, no doubt about it, but a little light on content. I would prefer the version 2.0, but...
October 6, 2022
Articulate and cogent argument for the use and adoption of web technologies
August 21, 2016
Excellent, research-driven analysis by Ms. Krotoksi.
Must read for nonconformists!
Must read for nonconformists!
April 17, 2017
Really interesting! Very well written too - engaging, digestible, thought-provoking, and backed by research.
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