11 Books About the Social Internet [Nonfiction November]

It’s a shame I read this book during my blogging slump last summer, because I enjoyed it so much. Maybe one day I’ll reread it and give it a proper review. It was a serendipitous find as I shelved new books at work one day. Fits squarely into the genre of exploring a nonfiction topic through one’s personal experience (I think there is a word for that?). The topic is the history of the social internet, through McNeil’s experiences over the years. Recommended if you’d like to reflect on what “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.”

Finishing Lurking finally made me excited to read this book. I love language, I love the internet, this book was written for folks like me. (Too bad it is that awful yellow colour which I despise.) I don’t have too much to say about it, though. Recommended if you’re fascinated by how written language has evolved for online communication.

I came across this book earlier in the year while browsing NetGalley. My jaw dropped, because it sounded too good to be true. I shared my thoughts on this book in my first post for Nonfiction November, but icymi… Unlike Lurking, Everything I Need doesn’t quite live up to its subtitle. Nonetheless, it is a fascinating case study in how the One Direction fandom grew into various online spaces. There’s enough context given that someone outside of the fandom can still appreciate and relate to the experience of the 1D fandom. Recommended if you have ever participated in online fandom.

Reviewed October 2020. This is another title I discovered while NetGalley browsing. It argues that ineffective internet advertising has built up around inaccurate and unreliable metrics. While I felt at times that this was a technical read, I learnt a lot about how internet advertising actually functions and underpins everything. Recommended if you’re concerned about the long term sustainability of the internet as we know it.

Reviewed January 2020. Likely an intriguing topic for anyone reading this post (ie anyone who spends a regular amount of time online!), Digital Minimalism is a mostly practical guide on how to manage your online time. While I don’t agree with everything Newport writes, and I think he leaves out some key considerations, I did find a lot of helpful takeaways. Recommended if the title or subtitle pique your interest at all.

I think this might complement Digital Minimalism? Apparently I shelved it in 2015, prior to its publication! I wonder how it’s aged.

“Tackling ideas of time, space, isolation, silence and threat – how our modern-day anxieties manifest online – and moving from Hamlet to the ghosts of social media, from Seinfeld to the fall of Gaddafi, from Twitter art to Oedipus, The Four-Dimensional Human is a highly original and pioneering portrait of life in a digital landscape.”

This book is perhaps the most ‘removed’ from my primary interest of all the books on this list. But then I think about the chatbots I encounter with airlines or banks, and how those are powered by AI…

“In this smart, often hilarious introduction to the most interesting science of our time, Shane shows how these programs learn, fail, and adapt–and how they reflect the best and worst of humanity. You Look Like a Thing and I Love You is the perfect book for anyone curious about what the robots in our lives are thinking.”

On the contrary to the book above, I have Like, Comment, and Subscribe on my Christmas wish list. YouTube has long been one of my favourite digital platforms, since I first watched Hank Green’s Accio Deathly Hallows via the YouTube home page in July 2007.

“Like, Comment, Subscribe is the first book to explain exactly how YouTube’s technology and business evolved, how it works, and how it helped Google grow to unimaginable power, a narrative told through the people who created YouTube and the Google engineers and chiefs who took it over.”

Here is a recent addition to the TBR, thanks to one of Kathie @ Bit About Books’ Nonfiction November posts!