Jessa Lingel Livres

How we lost control of the internet—and how to win it back.The internet has become a battleground. Although it was unlikely to live up to the hype and hopes of the 1990s, only the most skeptical cynics could have predicted the World Wide Web as we know it commercial, isolating, and full of, even fueled by, bias. This was not inevitable. The Gentrification of the Internet argues that much like our cities, the internet has become gentrified, dominated by the interests of business and capital rather than the interests of the people who use it. Jessa Lingel uses the politics and debates of gentrification to diagnose the massive, systemic problems blighting our contemporary erosions of privacy and individual ownership, small businesses wiped out by wealthy corporations, the ubiquitous paywall. But there are still steps we can take to reclaim the heady possibilities of the early internet. Lingel outlines actions that internet activists and everyday users can take to defend and secure more protections for the individual and to carve out more spaces of freedom for the people—not businesses—online.

The book explores craigslist as a counterpoint to corporate internet norms, emphasizing its role as a platform rooted in simplicity, collectivism, and local engagement. It traces craigslist's evolution from an email list to a major online marketplace, highlighting its legal battles over freedom of expression and privacy. Through user interviews, it analyzes the dynamics of its secondary marketplace and job-seeking practices, revealing the community's negotiation of rules and norms. Ultimately, the work prompts reflection on the web's evolution and the values worth preserving or changing in online interactions.

Whether by accidental keystroke or deliberate tinkering, technology is often used in ways that are unintended and unimagined by its designers and inventors. In Alt-People, Jessa Lingel offers an account of digital technology use that looks beyond Silicon Valley and college dropouts-turned- entrepreneurs. Instead, Lingel tells stories from the margins of countercultural communities that have made the Internet meet their needs, subverting established norms of how digital technologies should be used. By examining online life in terms of countercultural communities, Lingel argues that looking at outsider experiences helps us to imagine new uses and possibilities for the tools and platforms we use in everyday life.