Web We Weave

The internet is regularly blamed for splitting society, spying on its users, dulling our minds and hooking our children. Journalists and anxious lawmakers have answered with calls for tighter rules and more oversight. In The Web We Weave, Jeff Jarvis warns that this response could wreck the web before it has had the chance to mature, and he argues for a calmer, better-informed debate.

Jarvis looks at where the internet came from, where it stands now and where it could go. His central claim is that many of the harms pinned on the technology are really human failings. People did not learn to hate because of the web; they took their prejudice and bigotry with them when they went online. For that reason he believes even well-meant laws aimed at hate speech and misinformation will fall short, and they may erode the free expression the internet gives to everyone.

He proposes that we treat the internet as what it is, a network of people, and take it back from the technologists, commentators and politicians who currently steer it. The goal would be to build up community, conversation and creativity online. The book is meant as a counterweight to today's gloom about the web and sets out a hopeful picture of one that serves everybody. Jarvis is a journalist and media commentator who has also written What Would Google Do? and The Gutenberg Parenthesis.