Many think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of modern human technology. But is it? InThe 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...