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Internet for the People
In Internet for the People, leading tech writer Ben Tarnoff offers an answer. The internet is broken, he argues, because it is owned by private firms and run for profit. Google annihilates your privacy and Facebook amplifies right-wing propaganda because it is profitable to do so. But the internet wasn't always like this—it had to be remade for the purposes of profit maximization, through a years-long process of privatization that turned a small research network into a powerhouse of global capitalism. Tarnoff tells the story of the privatization that made the modern internet, and which set in motion the crises that consume it today.
The solution to those crises is straightforward: deprivatize the internet. Deprivatization aims at creating an internet where people, and not profit, rule. It calls for shrinking the space of the market and diminishing the power of the profit motive. It calls for abolishing the walled gardens of Google, Facebook, and the other giants that dominate our digital lives and developing publicly and cooperatively owned alternatives that encode real democratic control. To build a better internet, we need to change how it is owned and organized. Not with an eye towards making markets work better, but towards making them less dominant. Not in order to create a more competitive or more rule-bound version of privatization, but to overturn it. Otherwise, a small number of executives and investors will continue to make choices on everyone’s behalf, and these choices will remain tightly bound by the demands of the market. It's time to demand an internet by, and for, the people now.
The solution to those crises is straightforward: deprivatize the internet. Deprivatization aims at creating an internet where people, and not profit, rule. It calls for shrinking the space of the market and diminishing the power of the profit motive. It calls for abolishing the walled gardens of Google, Facebook, and the other giants that dominate our digital lives and developing publicly and cooperatively owned alternatives that encode real democratic control. To build a better internet, we need to change how it is owned and organized. Not with an eye towards making markets work better, but towards making them less dominant. Not in order to create a more competitive or more rule-bound version of privatization, but to overturn it. Otherwise, a small number of executives and investors will continue to make choices on everyone’s behalf, and these choices will remain tightly bound by the demands of the market. It's time to demand an internet by, and for, the people now.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published May 3, 2022
About the author
Ben Tarnoff
25 books43 followersBen Tarnoff is a tech worker, writer, and co-founder of Logic Magazine. His most recent book is Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do—and How They Do It, co-authored with Moira Weigel. He has written for the New York Times, the Guardian, the New Republic, and Jacobin.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
November 8, 2022
This was a great history of the ways private industry has taken control of the internet over the last 30 or so years, and some potential ways that humanity can work to reclaim it for people instead of profit. As someone who has been deeply involved with computers since the mid 90s, and leans pretty far left, I was surprised by how much I didn't know about the Clinton administration's role in selling the internet and particularly the web into the hands of private corporations. This is a must read if you're interested in the future of communications.
July 16, 2022
[Support an independent litmag and read this piece in The Cardiff Review instead!]
My sibling does not remember an internet not choked with advertisements. I do, but it wasn’t all that: as a young Indian logging on during the oft-eulogised transitional period between a static, ‘boring’ internet and Web 2.0, I found very little to relate with amongst the predominantly white and middle-class concerns of the users who dominated its discussions and processes. Now, over a decade and a half later, more people who live and look like me populate the internet than ever before—and yet, there is not a single pleasure to be taken in it that does not simultaneously lend to a growing sense of alienation, something that co-exists with the fact of us all being corralled into conducting an increasing number of our daily affairs online.
In Internet for the People, tech-worker and writer Ben Tarnoff sets out to explain why this is the case. According to him, if the internet—and perhaps, by extension, the world itself—seems to be broken, it is so because its machinery is actively being hijacked by private firms to enact a profit-only motive. Using fresh metaphors of pipes, stacks, and shopping malls (while also pondering on existing ones such as information ‘superhighways’) to make manifest its infrastructural intricacies and deliberate inequalities, he writes a stirring and succinct history of the internet. Breaking down its origins as a protocol in a publicly-funded project of the United States military and encompassing the major developments that have led to its development into a ‘place’ that feeds the algorithmic empires of Google, Facebook, and Amazon, this book pieces together the processes that made possible the participatory but predatory structure of the internet that we inhabit today. Implicit throughout its critical narrative is the idea that such an internet may be considered democratic, but is in fact governed—much like most contemporary ‘democracies’—by the singular and not-so-paradoxically impoverishing logic of capitalist accumulation.
In my reading, this history—one marked by the concentration of internet authority and ownership in the hands of a small number of private entities—explains why increased access to the internet amongst people from communities of colour in the West and dominant groups in underdeveloped nations changes very little about how we experience it. There may be more of us visible on various platforms, but the policies these platforms adhere to are put in place by company owners with commercial interests, who in turn are often funded by wealthy conservatives. Internet for the People similarly sheds light on the discomfiture of social media users who are constantly surveilled and whose data is exploited by these private entities for their own gain: it is simply another form of the alienation of the worker from the products of their labour. The logical solution, then, is for the people to take control of their data, their labour, and this ‘place’ that they inhabit.
Indeed, in framing the privatisation of the internet as a process, Tarnoff lays ground for ways in which we can remake it into a genuinely egalitarian and democratic space. Though his approach is somewhat wanting here on account of its inquiry being limited to events and developments from the United States, he does convincingly support his argument with examples of existing projects, including the open-source software project Mastodon and the community network providers operating in Chattanooga and Detroit, to demonstrate how a focus on community rears better results than indulging the logic of competition: the former project is infinitely more effective at curbing hate and creating a safer community than popular social media platforms tend to be, while in the latter instances the cost, connectivity, and speed of internet services have proven to be better than those provided by commercial ISPs.
However, the author’s goal here is not merely to advocate for alternatives that can exist alongside a privatised internet and its fragmented social media landscape, nor is he taking the kind of anti-monopolistic stance that advocates a reduced scale of competitors but wants to retain the market logic. Rather, borrowing from the work of socialists and abolitionists like Angela Davis, he argues for more radical action: of deprivatising the internet through the “imaginative work of abolition,” an act that requires creating newer and more interconnected, more diverse, and ultimately more democratic architectures to rebuild the internet along.
Just as a gifted artist would with a landscape of her own invention, Tarnoff paints the reader a picture of what his deprivatised internet would look like without dwelling on the fine details of how this can be brought about. The latter is a task he entrusts and encourages the readers to partake in as a political act. What Internet for the People does brilliantly then, in my opinion, is provoking the realisation—as it did with myself and my much younger sibling—that the internet we remember is not the internet that we want. In thus shifting the conversation on the future of the internet from the idea of re-forming a nostalgic but unequal past to the possibility of imagining anew, this book makes a stride towards the direction of an internet that is not merely for the people, but also one that could be crafted by them.
My sibling does not remember an internet not choked with advertisements. I do, but it wasn’t all that: as a young Indian logging on during the oft-eulogised transitional period between a static, ‘boring’ internet and Web 2.0, I found very little to relate with amongst the predominantly white and middle-class concerns of the users who dominated its discussions and processes. Now, over a decade and a half later, more people who live and look like me populate the internet than ever before—and yet, there is not a single pleasure to be taken in it that does not simultaneously lend to a growing sense of alienation, something that co-exists with the fact of us all being corralled into conducting an increasing number of our daily affairs online.
In Internet for the People, tech-worker and writer Ben Tarnoff sets out to explain why this is the case. According to him, if the internet—and perhaps, by extension, the world itself—seems to be broken, it is so because its machinery is actively being hijacked by private firms to enact a profit-only motive. Using fresh metaphors of pipes, stacks, and shopping malls (while also pondering on existing ones such as information ‘superhighways’) to make manifest its infrastructural intricacies and deliberate inequalities, he writes a stirring and succinct history of the internet. Breaking down its origins as a protocol in a publicly-funded project of the United States military and encompassing the major developments that have led to its development into a ‘place’ that feeds the algorithmic empires of Google, Facebook, and Amazon, this book pieces together the processes that made possible the participatory but predatory structure of the internet that we inhabit today. Implicit throughout its critical narrative is the idea that such an internet may be considered democratic, but is in fact governed—much like most contemporary ‘democracies’—by the singular and not-so-paradoxically impoverishing logic of capitalist accumulation.
In my reading, this history—one marked by the concentration of internet authority and ownership in the hands of a small number of private entities—explains why increased access to the internet amongst people from communities of colour in the West and dominant groups in underdeveloped nations changes very little about how we experience it. There may be more of us visible on various platforms, but the policies these platforms adhere to are put in place by company owners with commercial interests, who in turn are often funded by wealthy conservatives. Internet for the People similarly sheds light on the discomfiture of social media users who are constantly surveilled and whose data is exploited by these private entities for their own gain: it is simply another form of the alienation of the worker from the products of their labour. The logical solution, then, is for the people to take control of their data, their labour, and this ‘place’ that they inhabit.
Indeed, in framing the privatisation of the internet as a process, Tarnoff lays ground for ways in which we can remake it into a genuinely egalitarian and democratic space. Though his approach is somewhat wanting here on account of its inquiry being limited to events and developments from the United States, he does convincingly support his argument with examples of existing projects, including the open-source software project Mastodon and the community network providers operating in Chattanooga and Detroit, to demonstrate how a focus on community rears better results than indulging the logic of competition: the former project is infinitely more effective at curbing hate and creating a safer community than popular social media platforms tend to be, while in the latter instances the cost, connectivity, and speed of internet services have proven to be better than those provided by commercial ISPs.
However, the author’s goal here is not merely to advocate for alternatives that can exist alongside a privatised internet and its fragmented social media landscape, nor is he taking the kind of anti-monopolistic stance that advocates a reduced scale of competitors but wants to retain the market logic. Rather, borrowing from the work of socialists and abolitionists like Angela Davis, he argues for more radical action: of deprivatising the internet through the “imaginative work of abolition,” an act that requires creating newer and more interconnected, more diverse, and ultimately more democratic architectures to rebuild the internet along.
Just as a gifted artist would with a landscape of her own invention, Tarnoff paints the reader a picture of what his deprivatised internet would look like without dwelling on the fine details of how this can be brought about. The latter is a task he entrusts and encourages the readers to partake in as a political act. What Internet for the People does brilliantly then, in my opinion, is provoking the realisation—as it did with myself and my much younger sibling—that the internet we remember is not the internet that we want. In thus shifting the conversation on the future of the internet from the idea of re-forming a nostalgic but unequal past to the possibility of imagining anew, this book makes a stride towards the direction of an internet that is not merely for the people, but also one that could be crafted by them.
December 6, 2022
3.5 classic kind of half-edited verso project with some good points but a lot of rambling
July 15, 2022
We like to tell ourselves a story about the internet, how it grew out of pubic investment in science as we celebrate it as a success for the public sector, even as we lament its commercialisation and the ubiquity of its intrusions into and surveillance of our everyday lives (while also being kinda delighted by the Internet of Things and switching our heating or air con on during the drive home). Ben Tarnoff reminds us of the other part of that story – where all that public investment was pretty much given away to a small group of infrastructure providers whose pursuit of profit sacrificed the promise of a universal digital world, and whose kindred souls built giant shopping malls on top of that infrastructure, malls that sell us as much as they sell things to us.
Focusing almost exclusively on the USA (the story is similar in the UK, not identical but similar, as it is in various other parts of Europe and elsewhere also) Tarnoff traces the two tiers of internet privatisation, first of physical network of cables and relay stations and more, initially developed so the US military could fight wars more effectively, and then the emergence, especially of a series of platforms, that commercialised and commodified us. Initially, the commercialisation was of access to infrastructure (getting on line) then of our activities on-line (which is where buying and selling information about us comes into play).
Yet this is not all doom and gloom, although internet alternatives are limited in both presence and reach, Tarnoff sets out to encourage us to consider both the potential of doing things differently and to look at some of the existing differences. Not surprisingly given the balance of forces there is much more discussion of what happened than what might be, and the what happened, while US-specific, gives us a really good sense of access and infrastructure issues globally, as well as issues central to what happens once we get on-line.
The alternatives are more limited because there is less happening. Even so there is a useful discussion of the potential for a different model of the internet as a network of cooperatives, of public provision of infrastructure enhancing accessibility, of the need for protocols that continue to guarantee inter-network access and more. The surprising part of this for me not so much the options he explored – they are fairly well-trod in democratic economies discussions – as the sources of his inspiration. In his approach he weaves together principles derived from the abolitionist movement – that is a need for fundamental changes in social relations – and practice developed by the UK’s Greater London Council in its early 1980s Technology Networks focused on skills development for Socially Useful Production. Amid all of this he argues forcefully for ‘deprivatisation’ which is not a statist response, but a social response.
Tarnoff explains the messy world of internet development and privatisation, makes clear the forces and practices shaping our on-line activity and outlines some useful ways to think our digital lives in different ways. That combines to make it concurrently sobering and invigorating – just don’t expect a prescribed programme of action: his point it that this in one we’re going to have work out as we go along.
Focusing almost exclusively on the USA (the story is similar in the UK, not identical but similar, as it is in various other parts of Europe and elsewhere also) Tarnoff traces the two tiers of internet privatisation, first of physical network of cables and relay stations and more, initially developed so the US military could fight wars more effectively, and then the emergence, especially of a series of platforms, that commercialised and commodified us. Initially, the commercialisation was of access to infrastructure (getting on line) then of our activities on-line (which is where buying and selling information about us comes into play).
Yet this is not all doom and gloom, although internet alternatives are limited in both presence and reach, Tarnoff sets out to encourage us to consider both the potential of doing things differently and to look at some of the existing differences. Not surprisingly given the balance of forces there is much more discussion of what happened than what might be, and the what happened, while US-specific, gives us a really good sense of access and infrastructure issues globally, as well as issues central to what happens once we get on-line.
The alternatives are more limited because there is less happening. Even so there is a useful discussion of the potential for a different model of the internet as a network of cooperatives, of public provision of infrastructure enhancing accessibility, of the need for protocols that continue to guarantee inter-network access and more. The surprising part of this for me not so much the options he explored – they are fairly well-trod in democratic economies discussions – as the sources of his inspiration. In his approach he weaves together principles derived from the abolitionist movement – that is a need for fundamental changes in social relations – and practice developed by the UK’s Greater London Council in its early 1980s Technology Networks focused on skills development for Socially Useful Production. Amid all of this he argues forcefully for ‘deprivatisation’ which is not a statist response, but a social response.
Tarnoff explains the messy world of internet development and privatisation, makes clear the forces and practices shaping our on-line activity and outlines some useful ways to think our digital lives in different ways. That combines to make it concurrently sobering and invigorating – just don’t expect a prescribed programme of action: his point it that this in one we’re going to have work out as we go along.
June 28, 2022
A succinct and enjoyable history and explainer of the infrastructure of the internet and of the big Web 2.0 players (eBay, Google, Amazon, Facebook). It details how these companies finessed the internet to become so successful and pretty much encompass the entirety of the internet today. I was surprised by how simply yet exhaustively everything was covered. Maybe my favorite history of the internet I’ve ever read? My only complaint is that the actual “new internet ideas” section was so small. It was only one chapter at the very end. I kind of expected that to be the whole book—that's what I was looking for when I picked it up—but the simplicity and exactness of the critique of the internet as it is was so good, I can’t be that mad.
August 31, 2023
Bra och insiktsfull. Det upphör aldrig att förvåna hur hela den kapitalistiska berättelsen om den duktiga entreprenören ignorerar det faktum att det som låg till grunden till affärsmannens framgång var enorma offentliga satsningar som sedan gavs bort för struntsummor.
Det som saknas är dock mer detaljerade förklaringar för just varför t.ex. Amazon blev så populärt, eller hur nätverksorganisationer fungerar. Många av de tekniska termerna kunde författaren förklarat bättre också.
Och som vanligt i dessa pop-vänster-böcker så ger författaren för få alternativa lösningar. Även om Tarnoff faktiskt försöker mer än många andra.
Det som saknas är dock mer detaljerade förklaringar för just varför t.ex. Amazon blev så populärt, eller hur nätverksorganisationer fungerar. Många av de tekniska termerna kunde författaren förklarat bättre också.
Och som vanligt i dessa pop-vänster-böcker så ger författaren för få alternativa lösningar. Även om Tarnoff faktiskt försöker mer än många andra.
September 14, 2023
Not too much to say here, a history of the privatization of the internet.
I feel like this book would have been helped by a longer exploration of the introductory period re: how the “pipes” were privatized, including the dynamics of governance in that period and the specific actors involved. As we learn, privatization was entirely desired by the ruling elite of government and industry. Do the people who made these decisions still feel the same way?
Every time I get to the solutions sections of these books, I feel violently annoyed. Why even have a solutions section if you’re going to offer wishy washy crap. Really decreases my trust as a reader in the author’s ability to tell the history part in a fundamentally truthful way.
I feel like this book would have been helped by a longer exploration of the introductory period re: how the “pipes” were privatized, including the dynamics of governance in that period and the specific actors involved. As we learn, privatization was entirely desired by the ruling elite of government and industry. Do the people who made these decisions still feel the same way?
Every time I get to the solutions sections of these books, I feel violently annoyed. Why even have a solutions section if you’re going to offer wishy washy crap. Really decreases my trust as a reader in the author’s ability to tell the history part in a fundamentally truthful way.
January 4, 2023
Good book to read if you have been plunged into pessimism about the role of the internet in these days Muskian overlordship and the horror that is Meta. Tarnoff suggests that we rescue ourselves from total despair by breaking the problem down into bite-size chunks - which he says as the problem of pipes and platforms.
The pipes were laid down in the post-war decades and functioned as a set of rules that allowed computers to communicate with one another. This meant turning data into something that could "flow across any device, network and medium." The evidence that this could be done only emerged in the later 1970s and then as a result of research conducted in government-funded research with the public sector playing the leading role. All the most important innovations took place in the following decades. And them, Tarnow says, in the 1990s the internet died. It became a business as the government "ceded the pipes to a handful of corporations while asking for nothing in return."
Under the new regime the work of ISPs (internet service providers) became concentrated in just four firms - Comcast, Charter, Verizon and AT&T - who garnered 76% of the market. Granted evermore power over the direction global communication would take place, these corporations collaborated to ensure that it would draw ever larger rents in their direction. As a consequence the quality of internet services has never attained the levels that might have been hoped for , with low broadband speeds and deserts in rural areas where it doesn't function at all. Class and ethnic disparities show up across the whole system, with one half of low income households in the US (below $30,000 pa) having no access at home.
Tarnoff argues that his is damaging to democracy, since so much information about the state of the world now goes via the internet. To be without access means to have a channel of information closed off and the opportunity to participate in the online fora that influence political outcomes stymied. But a fightback is underway and network of community-based ISPs has begun to emerge, with Dakota and Detroit providing examples, which the book argues needs to be expanded and emulated.
After the pipes the analysis focusses on the role of platforms - the businesses which use the internet to trade. Here the story becomes one of try to pick out the 'real' subsumption of the capital-labour relationship from the formal. The early enterprises - eBay being an example - wanted to push the internet from being a mere marketplace where profits would come from the very traditional business of buying and selling stuff to something very different. Under the old model of doing business the market was a separate place from the community, which meant that the wider, non-commercial interest of communal life could find places where it could rally and defend itself against the forces of market depredation. Tarnoff argues that the platform businesses that emerged in the 1990s aimed at something new - effectively the dissolution of the community and its total absorption into market relations.
The dot.com business bust of the early 2000s added impetus to the evolution of the platform business into something more than just electronic shopping malls. Under the new regime the consumer was bring something more than just their cash to the marketplace - they were offering up a unique glimpse into their very souls which could be captured, changed into data and traded across markets that were in a position to monetarise their value. The technology allowed "the bundling of tiny moments of attention into discreet, liquid assets that can be bought and sold frictionlessly in a global marketplace."
This allows us to understand the strange business model of many startups which seem to depended on large expenditures to capture vast audiences for their products at the moment of launch. Backed by venture capitalists from the onset they expect to make nothing but losses in their early years of trading but which miraculously turn into substantial returns when the company is listed on the stock exchange. The goal which the has been the objective of the enterprise turns out to have been the creation of the 'data assets' which represent its real value.
But for Tarnoff these are profits derived from speculati0on rather than production, and as such they point to crises further down the line as trade becomes saturated with data which it can no longer turn into profit. One form that this takes arises from the practice of
predatory inclusion' - which proceeds by extending the network of apparent beneficiaries of the web activity to groups who have previously been regarded as marginal. Uber provides a clear example. Its app draws more people into the gig economy work of driving and delivering but in conditions which are more onerous to the people corralled into its pen. The algorithms that code these practices into the labour market end up perpetuating racial and class stereotypes
How to resist these developments? Tarnoff advocates the deprivatisation of the internet, with decentralised service providers generating sets of protocols that allow people to participate in the internet as members of genuine communities - communities that come into existence independently from the business logic of the currently existing internet. He channels the imaginative leaps that have been taken by abolitionist thinkers by marking out the steps that would bring about the withering of platforms and a transition to something which reverts to a time when the internet had the potential to develop as a tool for democracy rather the thing it is today - possibly its greatest enemy.
The pipes were laid down in the post-war decades and functioned as a set of rules that allowed computers to communicate with one another. This meant turning data into something that could "flow across any device, network and medium." The evidence that this could be done only emerged in the later 1970s and then as a result of research conducted in government-funded research with the public sector playing the leading role. All the most important innovations took place in the following decades. And them, Tarnow says, in the 1990s the internet died. It became a business as the government "ceded the pipes to a handful of corporations while asking for nothing in return."
Under the new regime the work of ISPs (internet service providers) became concentrated in just four firms - Comcast, Charter, Verizon and AT&T - who garnered 76% of the market. Granted evermore power over the direction global communication would take place, these corporations collaborated to ensure that it would draw ever larger rents in their direction. As a consequence the quality of internet services has never attained the levels that might have been hoped for , with low broadband speeds and deserts in rural areas where it doesn't function at all. Class and ethnic disparities show up across the whole system, with one half of low income households in the US (below $30,000 pa) having no access at home.
Tarnoff argues that his is damaging to democracy, since so much information about the state of the world now goes via the internet. To be without access means to have a channel of information closed off and the opportunity to participate in the online fora that influence political outcomes stymied. But a fightback is underway and network of community-based ISPs has begun to emerge, with Dakota and Detroit providing examples, which the book argues needs to be expanded and emulated.
After the pipes the analysis focusses on the role of platforms - the businesses which use the internet to trade. Here the story becomes one of try to pick out the 'real' subsumption of the capital-labour relationship from the formal. The early enterprises - eBay being an example - wanted to push the internet from being a mere marketplace where profits would come from the very traditional business of buying and selling stuff to something very different. Under the old model of doing business the market was a separate place from the community, which meant that the wider, non-commercial interest of communal life could find places where it could rally and defend itself against the forces of market depredation. Tarnoff argues that the platform businesses that emerged in the 1990s aimed at something new - effectively the dissolution of the community and its total absorption into market relations.
The dot.com business bust of the early 2000s added impetus to the evolution of the platform business into something more than just electronic shopping malls. Under the new regime the consumer was bring something more than just their cash to the marketplace - they were offering up a unique glimpse into their very souls which could be captured, changed into data and traded across markets that were in a position to monetarise their value. The technology allowed "the bundling of tiny moments of attention into discreet, liquid assets that can be bought and sold frictionlessly in a global marketplace."
This allows us to understand the strange business model of many startups which seem to depended on large expenditures to capture vast audiences for their products at the moment of launch. Backed by venture capitalists from the onset they expect to make nothing but losses in their early years of trading but which miraculously turn into substantial returns when the company is listed on the stock exchange. The goal which the has been the objective of the enterprise turns out to have been the creation of the 'data assets' which represent its real value.
But for Tarnoff these are profits derived from speculati0on rather than production, and as such they point to crises further down the line as trade becomes saturated with data which it can no longer turn into profit. One form that this takes arises from the practice of
predatory inclusion' - which proceeds by extending the network of apparent beneficiaries of the web activity to groups who have previously been regarded as marginal. Uber provides a clear example. Its app draws more people into the gig economy work of driving and delivering but in conditions which are more onerous to the people corralled into its pen. The algorithms that code these practices into the labour market end up perpetuating racial and class stereotypes
How to resist these developments? Tarnoff advocates the deprivatisation of the internet, with decentralised service providers generating sets of protocols that allow people to participate in the internet as members of genuine communities - communities that come into existence independently from the business logic of the currently existing internet. He channels the imaginative leaps that have been taken by abolitionist thinkers by marking out the steps that would bring about the withering of platforms and a transition to something which reverts to a time when the internet had the potential to develop as a tool for democracy rather the thing it is today - possibly its greatest enemy.
May 17, 2022
A sharp book on internet reform that also includes maybe the most cogent history of the internet I’ve ever read. Not all of his proposals are practicable or even desirable, but his framing for how we should think about the internet are upper and lowercase-i important.
January 7, 2023
Successful coverage of the history of the internet and attempts to bring it back to communities.
We start by discussing the military and state origins of the web, then the privatization of ISPs - Internet Service Providers. There is a lot here about the history of legal acts in the USA and attempts to regulate common spaces created by new technology.
There is also a description of the impact of communication network services on communities - fiber infrastructure and criticism of Internet service providers.
Subsequent chapters move attention up the „stack”. Platforms, dot-com bubble, network effects. Nothing new, but fun to read.
The author introduces the concept of shopping centers - companies that feed not only on transactions that take place on their service, but also on „data rental”. Zuboff is often quoted here.
Subsequent chapters also describe Amazon and its AWS as well as Uber which builds speculative financial value („data helps Uber sell - its equity”, „data is turned into money by interacting with the psychology of financial markets”)
The last two chapters are pretty weak though. They make much more use of the sociological point of view. Platforms exploit marginalized communities for exploitation. And regulators are trying to curb monopolies.
Existing existing alternative social networks, cooperatives and workers' cooperatives are presented. The author proposes to use the ideas of abolitionists, including Angela Davis, and to rely on the already existing network of public libraries in the USA.
We start by discussing the military and state origins of the web, then the privatization of ISPs - Internet Service Providers. There is a lot here about the history of legal acts in the USA and attempts to regulate common spaces created by new technology.
There is also a description of the impact of communication network services on communities - fiber infrastructure and criticism of Internet service providers.
Subsequent chapters move attention up the „stack”. Platforms, dot-com bubble, network effects. Nothing new, but fun to read.
The author introduces the concept of shopping centers - companies that feed not only on transactions that take place on their service, but also on „data rental”. Zuboff is often quoted here.
Subsequent chapters also describe Amazon and its AWS as well as Uber which builds speculative financial value („data helps Uber sell - its equity”, „data is turned into money by interacting with the psychology of financial markets”)
The last two chapters are pretty weak though. They make much more use of the sociological point of view. Platforms exploit marginalized communities for exploitation. And regulators are trying to curb monopolies.
Existing existing alternative social networks, cooperatives and workers' cooperatives are presented. The author proposes to use the ideas of abolitionists, including Angela Davis, and to rely on the already existing network of public libraries in the USA.
April 14, 2024
Very good introduction to the history of the Internet and its privatization! The solutions section feels too vague/thin but I think it’s a relatively unexplored arena so I don’t blame Tarnoff too much for that. The internet’s problems exists within the larger context of capitalism so to speak about the abolition of “online malls” without the abolition of capitalism feels backwards but then again if he were to focus on the abolition of capitalism this would be an entirely different book altogether and not as palatable. However, the book serves as a good start to imagining a better future overall.
April 23, 2024
Although I knew roughly about how & why the internet was created, I never thought too deeply about the internet’s actual configuration (eg. how networks “talk” to each other and the need for TCP) so this was super interesting.
It was downright depressing to read about the degree of control and dominance big tech companies have over something so important, but I think that the examples given of cooperatives & communities fighting back is reason to be hopeful that we can reclaim the internet from the suffocating ideology of capitalism.
It was downright depressing to read about the degree of control and dominance big tech companies have over something so important, but I think that the examples given of cooperatives & communities fighting back is reason to be hopeful that we can reclaim the internet from the suffocating ideology of capitalism.
June 26, 2022
Good intro to history of the internet, especially on how privatization wasn’t an inevitable outcome. I was expecting at least some discussion about histories of networks in countries outside the United States, on which this entire book is focused.
August 5, 2023
Nothing really new, but it presents a nice overview. It’s a shame to book doesn’t give more concrete ways/imaginings for this internet of the people, also it’s history of the internet is very US-centric.
July 14, 2022
darn tootin
November 19, 2023
That was really interesting.
June 16, 2022
A good introductory history of how each "stack" comprising the internet has been privatised over the years, from the pipes up to the platforms. I expect this will be very useful for policymakers.
I could've done with more detailed recommendations and examples of how non-private alternatives from other countries have fared (e.g. Minitel, BBC, Taiwan's deliberative platforms, various co-op Uber apps, GDPR, etc.). Solid overall, though!
I could've done with more detailed recommendations and examples of how non-private alternatives from other countries have fared (e.g. Minitel, BBC, Taiwan's deliberative platforms, various co-op Uber apps, GDPR, etc.). Solid overall, though!
April 23, 2023
Ehhh. Some interesting history, but didn’t sell me enough on the “abolish private internet” parts. The arguments felt a little thin, or missing context. I think the book would’ve benefited from a higher level discussion of abolishing capitalism and how that movement can align with rebuilding a more just internet. I also would’ve loved more concrete and examples of pockets of resistance/visions for a different internet
August 12, 2022
The diagnostic Tarnoff expose in the book is accurate and shows the level of research and expertise of the author in the field.
It's a book that explains how history, technology, ideology and politics have a deep effect in transforming the Internet from its beginnings to its current state.
At the sam time, exposes how the public, and especially American taxpayers have funded the early research and development of the Internet, and how the intention of its founding fathers was to give give back these investments in the form of a free and democratic institution.
It is eye opening how the author links the rise of neoliberalism as a mainstream ideology and the end of the Cold War to the privatization of the internet. Blind faith in the capacity of the market to self regulate and a deep distrust in the capacity of the state to provide socially efficient outcomes ended up forging the current state of the internet as much as the technologies, companies and enterpreneurs that took part in it.
As a diagnose and a picture of what the Internet looks like today and the problems it faces it is outstanding. The only criticism that could be made is that the spotlight is always in the United States with some side characters like the European Union. It somehow fails to understand the importance especially of Asia pacific powers and the differences of the cyberspace there, not only the use of the Internet authoritarian governments like China do but also some developments of other countries where fundamental technological research and development take place (Taiwan, South Korea, Japan).
In the end of each part, the author propose some solutions and examples that enlighten what a de-privatization of the internet would look like, or what kind of approaches are in line with what the author thinks. He diligently explains that the solutions he proposes are in no shape or form definitive and that there is a creative universe of things that haven't been explored and calls for a collective and democratic effort to imagine a new Internet. Nevertheless, the solutions the author propose seems (and in some cases he does it on purpose) regionalized, narrow or plainly impractical. Taking the power off the most important companies of the world would require a global effort, and this includes the involvement of countries that have very different views of the Internet and interests IN the Internet.
This is a very deep book, but with a somehow shallow program. Eye-opening and without a doubt worth a read.
It's a book that explains how history, technology, ideology and politics have a deep effect in transforming the Internet from its beginnings to its current state.
At the sam time, exposes how the public, and especially American taxpayers have funded the early research and development of the Internet, and how the intention of its founding fathers was to give give back these investments in the form of a free and democratic institution.
It is eye opening how the author links the rise of neoliberalism as a mainstream ideology and the end of the Cold War to the privatization of the internet. Blind faith in the capacity of the market to self regulate and a deep distrust in the capacity of the state to provide socially efficient outcomes ended up forging the current state of the internet as much as the technologies, companies and enterpreneurs that took part in it.
As a diagnose and a picture of what the Internet looks like today and the problems it faces it is outstanding. The only criticism that could be made is that the spotlight is always in the United States with some side characters like the European Union. It somehow fails to understand the importance especially of Asia pacific powers and the differences of the cyberspace there, not only the use of the Internet authoritarian governments like China do but also some developments of other countries where fundamental technological research and development take place (Taiwan, South Korea, Japan).
In the end of each part, the author propose some solutions and examples that enlighten what a de-privatization of the internet would look like, or what kind of approaches are in line with what the author thinks. He diligently explains that the solutions he proposes are in no shape or form definitive and that there is a creative universe of things that haven't been explored and calls for a collective and democratic effort to imagine a new Internet. Nevertheless, the solutions the author propose seems (and in some cases he does it on purpose) regionalized, narrow or plainly impractical. Taking the power off the most important companies of the world would require a global effort, and this includes the involvement of countries that have very different views of the Internet and interests IN the Internet.
This is a very deep book, but with a somehow shallow program. Eye-opening and without a doubt worth a read.
October 1, 2022
It’s an okay book, even though I almost stopped reading it in the middle since I was loosing patience in front if this “single-story” narrative. Plus I was not learning much new, like the critique on infrastructure’s and network’s privatization, and the illness of the big tech — most parts I looked into in the past as part of my own research, so duh. It was towards the end that when the author listed the various different alternatives that my interest began to grow again, and I fully agree that it’s the lack of imagination that many popular alternatives are still pretty much sticking to the market mom and capitalism dad. On one hand I see promising visions from letting users design and dev for themselves, on the other hand I’m also a lil bit skeptical regarding if users would really care enough to take on all the responsibilities — but the alternatives really need to be implemented first for me to legitimately worry about possibly consequences; it’s still way too early for my concerns now.
If there are participatory alternatives, then on a very personal level, perhaps I can also find another way to contribute my knowledge to the community/society, instead of only working for the current big/small tech companies.
If there are participatory alternatives, then on a very personal level, perhaps I can also find another way to contribute my knowledge to the community/society, instead of only working for the current big/small tech companies.
July 17, 2022
An effective history of how the internet was co-opted and what should be done. While I found the prescriptive side of the book was a little weaker (and maybe undersold some of the achievements of the open source community, the history of shareware, etc.), Tarnoff defuses that by pointing out that many of the things we need to untangle the problem haven't been thought of yet–they're models waiting to be invented.
He rightly points out that reinventing the internet requires reinventing a whole lot of things in the public square, and I appreciated how this book is never really advocating for new technologies and widgets so much as new models and organizations. However, given the current political climate, with the reactionary right purposefully hollowing out the administrative state, I found saying things like 'make this a public resource' to be a little bit shallow at times.
He rightly points out that reinventing the internet requires reinventing a whole lot of things in the public square, and I appreciated how this book is never really advocating for new technologies and widgets so much as new models and organizations. However, given the current political climate, with the reactionary right purposefully hollowing out the administrative state, I found saying things like 'make this a public resource' to be a little bit shallow at times.
November 18, 2022
Let me start by absolutely disagreeing with you, Mr. Tarnoff. When malls die they don’t spontaneously transform into forests. They turn into abandoned buildings where criminals and addicts flourish and piss on the walls.
The internet is a vast space and there is no restrictions for communities and governments to compete for attention- but that does not necessitate killing the for profit usage.
The book is fine till chapter 7 where the author narrates the history of the internet development. Once he starts his dystopian vision of how the internet should be transformed, it is really a complete non sense.
It is something similar to “defund the police” which is simply an advocacy for anarchists and criminals and which very rapidly been proven to be intolerable by people who want a decent life. Or even worse: an authoritarian tool to enslave the masses!
The internet is a vast space and there is no restrictions for communities and governments to compete for attention- but that does not necessitate killing the for profit usage.
The book is fine till chapter 7 where the author narrates the history of the internet development. Once he starts his dystopian vision of how the internet should be transformed, it is really a complete non sense.
It is something similar to “defund the police” which is simply an advocacy for anarchists and criminals and which very rapidly been proven to be intolerable by people who want a decent life. Or even worse: an authoritarian tool to enslave the masses!
January 17, 2023
I learned a lot about the history of the internet, and Tarnoff does a good job underlining how that history has impacted the internet of today. Even more than that though, I loved his imaginings of what an internet not driven by capitalism might look like. There are concrete proposals, from having your local library be an internet hub (a la Detroit), having municipal services run your internet connections (instead of comcast!), and having decentralised social media services running on shared protocols (think mastodon). Some I think are more realistic than others, but it offered an optimism I don't usually see in this genre of books. Would recommend for the history, and for offering a more optimistic alternative future to the bleak cyberpunk we're looking at now.
October 24, 2023
I LOVED THIS BOOK!
I liked it so much I went out and bought it as soon as I could so I could annotate it all over again. So I might have to update with the best quotes later, but essentially this does a great job laying out the genealogy of the internet we live with now, what decisions were actively made to get us there, and how we can make it better. This had the unique ability of being well informed non fiction that ended on an optimistic note which is already enough for me to recommend it to everyone.
Read! And advocate for better digital spaces! We deserve them!
The internet was publicly funded and is now privately owned for no reason at all besides lack of imagination. A better future is ahead of us. We just have to know enough to grasp it.
I liked it so much I went out and bought it as soon as I could so I could annotate it all over again. So I might have to update with the best quotes later, but essentially this does a great job laying out the genealogy of the internet we live with now, what decisions were actively made to get us there, and how we can make it better. This had the unique ability of being well informed non fiction that ended on an optimistic note which is already enough for me to recommend it to everyone.
Read! And advocate for better digital spaces! We deserve them!
The internet was publicly funded and is now privately owned for no reason at all besides lack of imagination. A better future is ahead of us. We just have to know enough to grasp it.
September 24, 2022
The book shows the third option to make a structural change to today’s internet monopolized by Big Tech: Deprivatization, other than two widely discussed options, rule-making and anti-monopoly movement. In that sense, the title of the book makes totally sense—Internet for the people, as opposed to today’s solutionism that overly emphasizes the practicality of the technology. Although no one, including the author, knows what that actually means, the potential solutions from the book like protocol’izing social networks, community owned internet infrastructure, and education to make the boundary between technical and nontechnical people blur are indeed inspiring; it’s so nice NOT to see casual mentioning about decentralization technology like blockchain. That said, my overall rating is negative because the book literary spent 3/4 of the pages simply for highlighting the history of the internet, which we can easily find in the other existing resources. Even though the author said understanding the history of privatization is a crucial first step towards deprivatization, the book was simply boring for me until the very last few sections.
https://takuti.me/note/internet-for-t...
https://takuti.me/note/internet-for-t...
January 10, 2023
Very interesting quick history of the development and privatization of the internet, a publicly funded and developed technology that lead to the creation of vast private profit. Learned about the low level infrastructure, the emergence of ISPs, and the major transition to private ownership and the political forces at play.
Then follows a few chapters about social networks and gig worker platforms - all good stuff but better covered in dedicated books like Zuboff's Surveillance Capitalism.
The paths forward are pretty unknown, but essentially it's public ownership and cooperativism - the only way for the user, the people, to be put first.
Then follows a few chapters about social networks and gig worker platforms - all good stuff but better covered in dedicated books like Zuboff's Surveillance Capitalism.
The paths forward are pretty unknown, but essentially it's public ownership and cooperativism - the only way for the user, the people, to be put first.
October 4, 2023
Excellent book, but I didn't read all of it: I read Part One and the conclusion, which means I skipped Part Two. What I did read was really informative and important, well-written and engaging. But I just didn't feel that I needed to keep reading to get the point, and that might be different for you. Maybe you care enough to read the whole thing, and will no doubt benefit from doing so. In any case, I highly recommend the book, it's a really important topic and even if you only read as much as I did, you'll have a lot of food for thought (and action, if you are so inclined). Thanks to the author for a great service to the people of the world!
October 2, 2022
This book is approximately 1 billion times better than Netflix's sensationalist and unimaginative "The Social Dilemma". A must-read for anyone who's ever thought that Facebook and Google and the other Internet giants are more than a little bit evil but felt powerless to change that. Not too long nor too short, not too dumbed-down nor too inaccessible, this is just... well-written. I will be re-reading this next year & checking out the author's other writings ASAP.
November 6, 2022
A good book that presents a lot of valuable information on the subject of decentralization of the internet. While all logical and well presented and cited, I found the idea of actions lacking among the rhetoric; this made the book feel less like something to prompt action, and more of useful thought experiments on the subject.
Towards the end of the book I found my pace slowing, but still holding my interest. Worth reading if the subject interests you.
Towards the end of the book I found my pace slowing, but still holding my interest. Worth reading if the subject interests you.
November 16, 2022
The argument itself (the internet needs to be reclaimed from privatization) is very compelling, and always urgent. I could have done without some of the details in the first half in this pretty short book (internet history 101), but that may be occupational interes cropping up.
The best compliment I can make, is that it offers the same analysis as Shoshanna Zuboff in about 1/8th of it's length.
Actually 3,5 start, but hey.
The best compliment I can make, is that it offers the same analysis as Shoshanna Zuboff in about 1/8th of it's length.
Actually 3,5 start, but hey.
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