The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is

Hardcover, 208 pages

Published April 22, 2022 by Princeton.

ISBN:: 978-0-691-21232-6

(1 review)

Many think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of modern human technology. But is it? In The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is, Justin Smith offers an original deep history of the internet, from the ancient to the modern world—uncovering its surprising origins in nature and centuries-old dreams of radically improving human life by outsourcing thinking to machines and communicating across vast distances. Yet, despite the internet’s continuing potential, Smith argues, the utopian hopes behind it have finally died today, killed by the harsh realities of social media, the global information economy, and the attention-destroying nature of networked technology.

Ranging over centuries of the history and philosophy of science and technology, Smith shows how the “internet” has been with us much longer than we usually think. He draws fascinating connections between internet user experience, artificial intelligence, the invention of the printing press, communication between …

Many think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of modern human technology. But is it? In The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is, Justin Smith offers an original deep history of the internet, from the ancient to the modern world—uncovering its surprising origins in nature and centuries-old dreams of radically improving human life by outsourcing thinking to machines and communicating across vast distances. Yet, despite the internet’s continuing potential, Smith argues, the utopian hopes behind it have finally died today, killed by the harsh realities of social media, the global information economy, and the attention-destroying nature of networked technology.

Ranging over centuries of the history and philosophy of science and technology, Smith shows how the “internet” has been with us much longer than we usually think. He draws fascinating connections between internet user experience, artificial intelligence, the invention of the printing press, communication between trees, and the origins of computing in the machine-driven looms of the silk industry. At the same time, he reveals how the internet’s organic structure and development root it in the natural world in unexpected ways that challenge efforts to draw an easy line between technology and nature.

Combining the sweep of intellectual history with the incisiveness of philosophy, The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is cuts through our daily digital lives to give a clear-sighted picture of what the internet is, where it came from, and where it might be taking us in the coming decades.

1 edition

Finserra reviewed The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is by Justin E. H. Smith

Not What You Think

4 stars

You might very well shelve this book after the first 30 pages wondering how on Earth this philosophy academic's staccato digressions into the minds of Enlightenment rationalists will be made relevant to today's internet. In doing so, you will have mistaken the author's object in writing the book for the one you might have expected (a book consumed with the problems of the internet you know ). While such topics are occasionally referenced -- the propensity of social media to leverage inflammatory commentary or to proliferate untruths -- the book is far more concerned with putting the entirety of the internet in the context of broader scientific, historical, and philosophical themes. With further reading, you will learn, and likely enjoy learning, about today's internet (i.e. the IOT, social media, 3D printing, collection and presentation of learned texts) as part of a continuous development of natural, mechanical, and logical reckoning, calculating, …

You might very well shelve this book after the first 30 pages wondering how on Earth this philosophy academic's staccato digressions into the minds of Enlightenment rationalists will be made relevant to today's internet. In doing so, you will have mistaken the author's object in writing the book for the one you might have expected (a book consumed with the problems of the internet you know ). While such topics are occasionally referenced -- the propensity of social media to leverage inflammatory commentary or to proliferate untruths -- the book is far more concerned with putting the entirety of the internet in the context of broader scientific, historical, and philosophical themes. With further reading, you will learn, and likely enjoy learning, about today's internet (i.e. the IOT, social media, 3D printing, collection and presentation of learned texts) as part of a continuous development of natural, mechanical, and logical reckoning, calculating, production, and telecommunications machines and modalities (real, desired, and fanciful). The rationalists are discussed largely as recognizing and explaining the aspect of mind that realized and promoted this progression, including seeing in the then-modern looms the calculating machine that made them run. It's a great book for those who keep their aperture on the internet broad.