James Ball at 2020
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/53261015-the-system
History of Internet Internet Submarine internet cables
Highlights
Goodreads
Perhaps the most important part of the book is the second section on ‘the money’. Here we meet both the venture capitalists and the ad men. Most revealing is the section on advertising, where Ball takes us into the intensely complex links and mechanisms that lie behind the apparently simple process of an advert appearing on a web page on our browsers. I was fascinated and horrified by the sheer quantity of information about me that is flying back and forth at this point - most of it not to the advertiser but to other sites that have left cookies behind. Ball refers to those tedious GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) checks for permission we get on visiting new websites, which most of us just ‘OK’ without reading. Guilty of doing this, I discovered I had cookies for over 4,000 websites contributing to this hidden eco-structure - I’ve now deleted them all and take the time to check what I’m saying Yes to. This is the most technical part of the book, covering the behind-the-scenes mechanisms. Though important, it proved the weakest part for readability as the explanation is not particularly well-written and a little dull.
what we learn is a seemingly obvious truth. the internet, which we believe to be a equitable and neutral space, is actually the current new frontier of capitalism and state surveillance.
The System is one of the most comprehensive nonfiction books on how the ownership of the Internet and how the internet has possessed our movements and ideas in ways unimaginable and unanticipated. In short, it is a phenomenal nonfiction book which deserves a special place in your bookshelf.
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Social media is a small figment in the large ocean known as the Internet. And, The System analyses its socio-economic and political influence on the real world of tangibility. James Ball voices his ideas and opinions in a very structured manner, beginning first with the idea of the Internet as a mass of revolutions.