Joanne McNeil

A concise but wide-ranging personal history of the internet from—for the first time—the point of view of the user In a shockingly short amount of time, the internet has bound people around the world together and torn us apart and changed not just the way we communicate but who we are and who we can be. It has created a new, unprecedented cultural space that we are all a part of—even if we don’t participate, that is how we participate—but by which we’re continually surprised, betrayed, enriched, befuddled. We have churned through platforms and technologies and in turn been churned by them. And yet, the internet is us and always has been. In Lurking, Joanne McNeil digs deep and identifies the primary (if sometimes contradictory) concerns of people online: searching, safety, privacy, identity, community, anonymity, and visibility. She charts what it is that brought people online and what keeps us here even as the social equations of digital life—what we’re made to trade, knowingly or otherwise, for the benefits of the internet—have shifted radically beneath us. She is not interested in the fortunes being made or the specific technologies developed, but in the space we have made and the culture we have created. It is a story we are accustomed to hearing as tales of entrepreneurs and visionaries and dynamic and powerful corporations, but there is a more profound, intimate story that hasn’t yet been told. Long one of the most incisive, ferociously intelligent, and widely respected cultural critics online, McNeil here establishes a singular vision of who we are now, tells the stories of how we became us, and helps us start to figure out what we do now.

How a Person Became a User

Lurking

Joanne McNeil’s debut novel is an idea-driven portrait of a woman cornered by capitalism who lands her dream job. For years, Teresa has meandered from one job to the next, settling into long stretches of time, unable to move ahead in any field or career, the dreaded move from one gig to another starting to feel unbearable. When a recruiter connects her with a contract position at AllOver, it appears to check all her prerequisites for a “good” job. It’s a fintech corporation with progressive hiring policies and a social justice-minded mission statement. Their new service for premium members: a functional fleet of driverless cars. The future of transportation. As her new-hire orientation reveals, the distance between AllOver’s claims and its actions is wide, but the lure of financial stability and a flexible schedule is enough to keep Teresa driving forward. Joanne McNeil, who often reports on how the human experience intersects with tech, brings all of her compassion and criticism about labor and technology to Wrong Way. In this thought-provoking, fresh, and humane novel, she captures the existential perils imposed by a nonstop, full-service gig economy, and exposes the toll of corporate calculations on the human spirit.

A Novel

Wrong Way

Nicholas Lambert

Domenico Quaranta

This long-awaited visual survey of art and the Internet over the last two and a half decades explores the legacy of the Internet on art and reveals how artists and institutions are using it and why. Original, 3,000 first printing.

Joanne McNeil

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