Internet is Not the Answer

Long-time Silicon Valley observer and author Andrew Keen argues that, on balance, the Internet has had a disastrous impact on all our lives. By tracing the history of the Internet, from its founding in the 1960s to the creation of the World Wide Web in 1989, through the waves of start-ups and the rise of the big data companies to the increasing attempts to monetize almost every human activity, Keen shows how the Web has had a deeply negative effect on our culture, economy and society. Informed by Keen's own research and interviews, as well as the work of other writers, reporters and academics, The Internet is Not the Answer is an urgent investigation into the tech world--from the threat to privacy posed by social media and online surveillance by government agencies, to the impact of the Internet on unemployment and economic inequality. Keen concludes by outlining the changes that he believes must be made, before it's too late. If we do nothing, he warns, this new technology and the companies that control it will continue to impoverish us all.

Cover; Title Page; Copyright page; Dedication page; Contents; Preface: The Question; Introduction: The Building is the Message; 1. The Network; Networked Society; Forebears; From Sputnik to the ARPANET; The Internet; The World Wide Web; 2. The Money; The One Percent Economy; Monetization; The Winner-Take-All Network; The Code is Cracked; Data Factories; The Cult of the Social; Distributed Capitalism; 3. The Broken Center; The Future; Coming to an Office Near You; The Writing on the Wall; The Broken Center; You Better Watch Out; 4. The Personal Revolution; The Instagram Moment.

An Untruthful MirrorHello This is Us; Original Sin; 5. The Catastrophe of Abundance; The Narrow Stump; Business 0.02; The Catastrophe of Abundance; 6. The One Percent Economy; An Abundance of Stupidity; The One Percent Rule; The People Formerly Known as the Audience; Fashion 3.0; 7. Crystal Man; The Ministry of Surveillance; The Eyes of the Venetian; The Panopticon; Our Crystal Future; 8. Epic Fail; FailCon; The Real Failure; The Alien Overlord Spaceships; Class Warfare; Secession; Conclusion: The Answer; The Fancy-Dress Affair; Disrupting the Disruptors; The Medium is not the Message.

The Alien SpaceshipA…