Lurking

Lurking is Joanne McNeil's personal history of the internet, told from the perspective of the people who use it rather than the companies that built it. In a remarkably short time, the internet has connected people across the globe and divided them, and it has changed how we communicate and who we are able to be. It has created a cultural space that everyone inhabits, even those who never post, since staying silent is still a way of taking part. We have cycled through platforms and technologies, and they have reshaped us in return.

McNeil identifies the main concerns that people bring online, which sometimes pull against each other: searching, safety, privacy, identity, community, anonymity and visibility. She traces what first drew people to the internet and what keeps them there, even as the bargain of digital life has shifted underneath them and the price paid for its benefits has changed, whether people realize it or not.

The familiar version of this history features entrepreneurs, visionaries and powerful corporations. McNeil argues for a more intimate story that has not yet been told. A widely read cultural critic who writes about the internet, she explains how we reached the present moment and what we might do next.