The Internet We Could Have Had

1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-5095-7450-6
Verlag: Polity Press

Buch, Englisch, 240 Seiten

What happened to the internet we could have had? Can we remember a future that did not come to pass? The Internet We Could Have Had takes up the challenge, revisiting the days of "end-to-end" networks, of net neutrality, of free and open source software, the days of Geocities and the lulz of Anonymous. Not as nostalgia, but as a reckoning with the internet we do have.

The internet we could have had was a promise; it could have been a global brain, an end to monopoly capitalism, a liberation of free speech. How did we get from there to here: to surveillance capitalism and data colonialism, facing an extractive AI industry and a fragmented social media landscape powered by misinformation and advertising? Where did it all go wrong? What happened to the promise of the internet and how did it become the disaster we know today?

Part political inquest, part theoretical autopsy, Kelty documents how aspirations of liberation, openness, and participatory democracy opened a door — and through that door walked the Facebook Like Button, Amazon Web Services, Google’s Chrome browser and much more. A work of concerted remembering, The Internet We Could Have Had is an attempt to fathom how this past was immensely generative of a future we didn't ask for.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kelty, Christopher M.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Mediensoziologie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

I: 404 Not Found
1.1. Syntax Error
1.2. Insufficient Memory
1.3. Reloading.

II: Have you tried turning it off and on again?
2.1. If Openness.
2.1.1.then Google
2.2. If Decentralization.
2.2.1.then Amazon
2.3. If Participation.
2.3.1.then Facebook
2.4. Else Hackers

III: Future Exception Handling
3.1. The brains we could have had?

Über Autor(innen)

Christopher M. Kelty is Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.