User Profile

Loved this book

I admittedly only skimmed over the first section of this book (the ethnography portion). However, I really enjoyed reading the second part. It's not that Graeber goes into anything I didn't already know about punk, anarchist, DIY movements. Instead I think he connects his insights really beautifully to larger concepts and moments in history in a way that is accessible and coherent.

I appreciated how he interrogated moral panics around anarchists and certain ill conceived stereotypes as well as certain contradictions and paradox's within the movement.

I echo the review below that posits this is a relatively sad story. It made me curious to think what the author thinks now over 15 years later and how much computers and the internet have strayed from the countercultural ideologies he accounts for.


Overall I liked the book. It helped me understand cybernetics, a concept I struggled to grasp prior to reading this book. It started to get a bit tedious and ponderous like he was explaining the same things over and over again, I felt like, at times, he could have made the chapters quite a bit shorter. Nonetheless, I do appreciate this book and think it's an important read for people studying the history of computers and the Internet.

Very enjoyable read. My one qualm is that I wish there was some kind of conclusion chapter that gave a deeper analysis of the stories he shares in the book. The book almost functions as an ethnography, where each chapter is about a different person. I would have been interested in reading something where the author reflects on the experiences and maybe puts some theoretical historical analysis on it.

The chapter I enjoyed reading the most was "the emptiness." The glossary at the end is really helpful too.