Im gonna read it 💪 looks really interesting thank you

Looks like an interesting book!

For those whom the hardback copy is prohibitively expensive, the publishing company, Verso, also has an ebook copy for $6.

There is also an interview with the author available on Internet Archive.

Sorry I am a week late from the finish date. Finally got a chance to read it...

First, here is an extended table of contents (i.e.: chapters with subsections) to make it easier to reference and review specific topics:

Preface - Among the Eels

Market Failure

Into the Stack

New Directions

Part 1 - The Pipes

Chapter 1 - A People's History of the Internet

Birth of a Network

The Mainframe and the Battlefield

From Protocol to Place

Open for Business

The Electronic Shopping Mall

Chapter 2 - The Plunder Continues

The Internet's Slumlords

The Possibility of Democracy

Chapter 3 - The People's Pipes

The People Rule

Making an Example

Defend and Extend

Wiring an Ecosystem

Small Is Not Always Beautiful

Chapter 4 - From Below

Competition is Overrated

Spy Machines

Part 2 - The Platforms

Chapter 5 - Up The Stack

Platforms Don't Exist

The Ultimate Market

Community Standards

Chapter 6 - Online Malls

The Eyeball Business

Making Friends

Chapter 7 - Elastic Empires

The Internet's Factories

Far from the Mothership

The Everywhere Machine

Command and Control

Discipline at a Distance

Real Abstractions

Saturation Point

Chapter 8 - Inclusive Predators

An Entangled Existence

Risk and Reward

Remastered

Innovation Opportunism

Beyond the Bubble

Balancing Act

Multiple Choice

Chapter 9 - Toward the Forest

Market Forces

Facing Reality

Birds in the Food Court

Protocolize the Walled Gardens

Public Programming

Common Sense

Innovation from Below

Everything Else

Conclusion - Future Nostalgia

Next, here is a brief summary and a bit of personal commentary:

Ben is a fantastic writer. The book offers an expansive view, yet stays clear and concise, steadily building upon itself throughout.

• Part 1 gives a history of the Internet backbone as it exists within the United States, describing the development of the computer network(s) that comprise it (moving from to the creation of ARPANET to the founding of NSFNET and its privatization by various telecommunications companies).

• Part 2 gives a history of several businesses that use that physical infrastructure (specifically eBay, Google, Amazon, and Uber), explaining the various ways in which each of them have attempted to fuse together markets and communities in order to "monetize" the data generated by the latter.

Tying all of this together are two analogies:

1. The House Analogy - All aspects of the Internet are stacked on top of one another. The physical networks described in part 1 are like the pipes within the basement of a house, and the systems used by the businesses described in part 2 are like the activities occurring within the upper floors. One is built upon the other. [While it is related, this is not to be confused with The OSI 7-Layer Model that is used within the study of Networking. It is a lot more general.]

2. The Shopping Mall Analogy - The systems described in part 2 are often presented within public discourse as if they are "platforms" in the literal sense of the word (i.e.: a tool that people can use to present something to a large crowd). In actuality, they are environments structured by those businesses for the purpose of "profit maximization" at the expense of their "users" through algorithms and other means. He likens them to online "shopping malls". [It is important to note how much research into human behavior is behind the design of business environments of all kinds. It would seem that many people are unaware of just how influenced they are by forces outside of themselves.]

The book also serves as a useful outline of alternatives. To quote the Conclusion...

...Privatization was an act of reinvention: it made a small academic network into the modern internet. Deprivatization must be no less inventive. If privatization meant creating an internet that served the principle of profit maximization, deprivatization means creating an internet organized by the idea that people, not profit, should rule.

No single line of attack can achieve this end. Different strategies are needed for different layers. Down the stack, in the realm of the pipes, publicly and cooperatively owned community networks are the building blocks of a democratic internet. These networks can serve the communities exploited and excluded by the slumlords of the broadband cartel; instead of funneling money upward to executives and investors, they can focus on making service accessible and affordable. They can also give communities control over their operations, so that users and residents determine how infrastructure is run. Hundreds of such networks already exist across the United States, but they will have to be defended and extended with public support.

Up the stack, among the so-called platforms, the path to deprivatization is less linear. There is no equivalent of the community network. Here what's needed is the imaginative work of abolition. Two maneuvers are involved: first, shrinking the footprint of the online malls, which means making common cause with anti-monopoly advocates. Yet the goal of deprivatization is not an internet with more competitive markets, but an internet where markets matter less. This is why, while working to disassemble the online malls, we must also be assembling a constellation of alternatives that can lay claim to the space they currently occupy. And these must be real alternatives, not smaller or more entrepreneurial versions of the tech giants but institutions of a fundamentally different kind, engineered to curtail the power of the profit motive and to enshrine the practices and principles of democratic decision-making. Some are already emerging in rudimentary form - self-governing social media communities, worker-owned app-based services - but they will need to be refined and expanded through public investment. We will also need spaces that help new alternatives emerge, where people can collectively articulate their needs and construct the online worlds capable of meeting them.

There is so much material here that could be elaborated upon and implemented in various ways. Many of the examples that he shares are quite inspiring as well. I am tempted to systematically go through all of it point-by-point and add comments, but I will stop there for now. Thank you so much for sharing!

Did everyone else enjoy the book? What are your thoughts?