Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - Lurking (a conversation with Joanne McNeil)

Episode Date: May 6, 2020

Just before the Coronavirus upended our lives I recorded a conversation with writer Joanne Mcneil about her new book Lurking, a book about the internet. Its actually one of my now favorite books ever written about the internet. I had the show all ready to go for the week of March 15th and then… well everything changed, even our dependence on the internet. Joanne Mcneil’s book feels even more relevant now. Get Lurking here from Bookshop.

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. Just before the coronavirus upended my and your lives, I recorded a conversation with the author Joanne McNeil about her new book, Lurking, for the podcast. Normally, I don't do this kind of episode. I don't devote a whole episode to just one book. But lurking is special. And Joanne is too. She's actually my go-to example for what a real technology critic could or should be. In lurking, Joanne starts with some of her own early experiences on the internet and traces a path into the heart of this complex web of the digital self, never-ending surveillance, and social networking. It's actually one of the best books about the internet I've ever had the pleasure of reading, and I was super excited to share it with you.

I had the whole episode ready to go, ready to post for the week of March 14th. And then, well, a lot of stuff happened. But I'm going to post it now. Because it's not like this conversation is out of date. Seven weeks into coronavirus, we all know that the internet has managed to become an even bigger part of our lives. I did reach out to Joanne to check in on her and record a new intro. So where are you right now? I'm in New Hampshire.

My parents live here and I had come this way because I had a few events in New England. Yeah, you were on a book tour or you were supposed to be on a book tour now, right? Yeah, I was supposed to go out to the West Coast and do a few bookstore events there. But that did not happen. Do you remember when you realized that you were going to have to cancel everything? Yeah, because it was, I had a conversation on the 10th where I was like, well, March 10th, yes, on March 10th. And I was talking with my pebosist about whether we

should cancel or not and I said you know if the bookstores are still holding these events um I'm just I'm gonna go along with this this is this is probably my only chance to do this and then um by the 11th uh with all the news that just came in that day, it just was so undeniable that this just was not going to happen. Yeah. And so you canceled the rest of the tour? Yeah. So let's say it was possible to do, you know, like a socially distanced um safe book tour i'm wondering what you feel you know might come to the forefront of the conversations i there there i have two thoughts which is that i i feel a little bit funny kind of even promoting my book because it's so

small in proportion to everything going on. And also, I know that even on an individual level, people are possibly not in the mode that they even want to read a book. So it's just so I have like, I have a lot of respect for that. But I also feel, you know, if someone were interested in this subject, the Internet is one constant that hasn't changed so dramatically. I mean, we're certainly using different apps at the moment, most of us, but the and we're online a lot more. But we've had experiences, internet users have had experiences using technology through a crisis. And that's actually something that comes up a little bit in my book. I talk about internet communities that have come together through 9-11 or in response to the Iraq War or numerous events in recent history, there has been a gathering of communities online

and finding communities in those moments. And I think one thing that I've been thinking about, I don't go this far back in history in my book, but there's some debate about this, but it's accepted by a number of people that the internet, at least in the ARPA days, was created for

the possibility of nuclear war, that there would be communication that would sustain itself. So if you think about it that way, it was built for an apocalypse. It was built for quarantining. Okay, now you're really bumming me out, Joanne. I know.

So there is something to it that we have this way of keeping in touch. Now, I don't think people back then ever imagined that this would be also all of our entertainment, all of our culture, all of everything having to sustain some semblance of what we had before. That's a lot for the internet to do. Yeah, it is. But yeah, I think that works as a new coronavirus intro. Now I'm just gonna hit play to what we made before.

So you really write beautifully about some of your early memories about using the internet. And I'm thinking we should just start there because early internet time also lines up with your adolescence. You use some of your early experiences, whether it be looking for other teenage girls to talk with or turning to Conway Twitty for a username,

even though you don't know who Conway Twitty is, to remind us that even though the early internet was never innocent, it was magical. Yeah, magical is the word. It was very important to me to be able to represent the joy that I felt when I first came to the internet and the sense of release. Because I don't necessarily know that that kind of how it was just open and free for anyone to stumble into and going to a menu and clicking a bunch of options and trying to find my way to some interesting communication or some kind of sense of belonging. And I discussed message boards in chat rooms where I was communicating with other teenage girls. But before I found those spaces, I was definitely clicking around and just not really finding my people.

And there were moments I remember how I'd randomly stumble into various AOL chat rooms and be overwhelmed. The one that I think about a lot, I believe it was called the Artist Palette, and it was for artists, and it was for artists on AOL. So there was a lot of what I would imagine are watercolors and potters. And I say this like sweetly like there is just something very charming about myself as a as a you know 15 year olds hopping into this artist palette chat room and and meeting what I imagine were probably 50 year olds 60 year olds who I just imagine them somewhere around like Key West like that's just in my mind I just figure they them somewhere around like Key West. Like that's

just in my mind, I just figure they have to be from Key West. But they would be talking about their practice and a lot about their philosophy of their practice. And I remember trying so hard to keep up with the adults in this chat room once that I would say just absurd things trying to sound grown up. Like I think that the line I used to impress everyone was, art has to be all feeling and no thought. You could have either inspired someone in Key West or just made them stop. Let's talk about the title of your book, Lurking.

Do you still lurk in chat rooms like Artist Palette? What's the significance of lurking for you? Well, lurking is how I feel the most present as an internet user. I'm not someone who immediately engages with a community. I definitely, even in the case of the Artist Palette, I probably watched the communications flow through for at least 10 minutes before I just wrote down my useless contribution.

The word lurking, it's used to describe watching rather than participating. So that could be someone who goes to a chat room and never leaves a post. It can be a very warm and instructive way to approach the Internet. Look, I don't need to contribute something. I'm just trying to figure out what they're trying to say. Another history that you share is your way of telling the story of the evolution of friend networks. And I think, you know, there's been a lot of internet researchers

and academics who've looked at this progression from Friendster to Facebook. But I don't think I ever appreciated how important this core desire to catalog hot women has been until, you know, I read your version. And maybe if you could maybe talk a little bit about what we need to focus more on. Oh, the thing we need to focus more on is how not serious it was. If it's a social network from the arts,

it was probably founded by a man who just wanted to be able to catalog attractive women. That's almost always the story behind it. But also when you look into why these social networks found users in the first place, it was because they were silly. And I don't think that's understood well enough these days that an early user of Friendster didn't join Friendster because they thought they were doing something important. They were either joining to also find attractive people or because it was called Friendster, which is an incredibly silly product name. As is MySpace.

As is MySpace. Most tech companies have incredibly silly names. And so it was a fun hangout on the internet place to meet people in a way that was just casual enough that you didn't feel self-conscious to send a line to a stranger and see if they'd want to grab coffee later. I mean, it was loose and unpretentious, and that created this welcoming energy that if you were participating, there was no sense that you could never leave either, which is a big contrast between the social networks today, where you're very much locked in due to a number of

aspects of your social and professional life. Yeah, I think this gets to how you talk about the way Friendster failed getting people to use their real identities, whereas Zuckerberg totally succeeded at this. In fact, he uses identity as a weapon, almost a tool of enforcement. But I'm curious, you know, where this issue intersects with your insistence that, you know, there was just totally something non-serious about the original impetus for you and your friends to join friend networks. Yeah. I mean, the other thing with Friendster is there was some insistence about real names, but it felt too early. And there was in between Friendster and Facebook was MySpace, which was very much a free for all, crazy usernames, much more experimental and silly. But where Facebook succeeded, I think comes down to it being associated with Harvard. I think that is how it gained trust. By Harvard, you mean like showing the rest of the world, this is what you need to aspire to be on. Yes. And sense of parents being very scared if their teenagers were using MySpace because of all

the stranger danger they'll inevitably end up in a hotel room with some older man. But Harvard, this social network associated with Harvard, how aspirational. But not just parents. I mean, you point out that like even young people were like recognizing that, oh yeah, this is where like Latinos and non-whites hang out on MySpace and the serious kids go over here. There was just such a level of classism. It was very clear the elements of class and aspiration that Zuckerberg fermented. He did have a sense that that's what he was doing. Well, yeah. I mean, you remind us that one of Zuckerberg's first statements about users

was when he called them dumb fucks. And for years he's been arguing that he was simply immature when he said this, and it's not fair that we forever hold him to this. I'm not ready to let that go. And what about you? I think he thinks of most people as dumb fucks. It seems pretty clear. You know, I don't plan on writing a book about the internet, but if I did, I would always call it dumb fucks. That's what they should have called

the social network. I mean, that's what they should have called the. Yeah. But, you know, I want to talk about something else that came out in 2010, a book that was released like weeks after the social network hit theaters, Tim Wu's book, The Master Switch, which was a look back at an earlier communications revolution surrounding the telephone and the radio. And I bring this up because Tim examined the role that government played in helping these industrial monopolies like ABC and AT&T consolidate power. And when the book came out back in 2010, you know, it was kind of impossible not to think like, wow, okay, so how is this going to go down with the internet

companies like Google and Facebook? But today, you know, 10 years later, you know, I think it's, you know, really important to note that, you know, there was no government regulation. There were no like deals that enabled Facebook to grow and consolidate power, you know, at the expense of other companies and other alternatives. It's the users. It's Facebook's users who helped Zuckerberg build his empire. And, you know, I know it sounds crass, but I just can't help imagining Zuckerberg waking up every morning, you know, after checking how many billions he has in his bank account, you know, looking in the mirror and saying, dumb fucks. But, you know, reading your thoughts about when and why you stopped using Facebook and Instagram, it did make me feel like maybe I'm being a bit too harsh. Am I?

One thing that I would dial back is I don't think users are responsible for where Facebook is today. The elements of government not intervening, it's a little bit complicated. And it goes back to, you know, Barack Obama did seem to have the support of Silicon Valley very strongly. And this would have been about the time that targeted advertisement was really skyrocketing as the way that these social platforms were making money. And I strongly feel that the period of time that is the least studied and the most underwritten about is that period of late aughts to just before the Snowden leaks. That's when the changes were happening, and there wasn't enough media scrutiny,

and there certainly wasn't government regulation. There could have been something like rights over data, like legislation of that sort that might have been useful in these years. And I also feel a strong element of this was the lack of media attention toward Silicon Valley in the years where it was growing enormously. That would be a time that instead of having stories about what are the risks that Facebook legitimately poses to society in terms of data, in terms of surveillance, there would be cover stories in The Atlantic about is Facebook making us lonely? rigorous commentaries about the internet came at the expense of more thorough investigations of

the scope of their power and the risks that they did present. Well, let's come back to another lens you do write about in your book, thinking about that time period, is like looking at the introduction of the iPhone, which was 2007. You know, you write that it shows up basically at the same moment as Obama arrives on the scene and the Great Recession. So when you think back to those three things coming together with the, I mean, no one forced everybody to go out and buy a $500 iPhone. And people had no money to buy them. And people had no money. And it was something that made people's lives easier, possibly. But the convergence of those three elements, Barack Obama's presidency, Great Recession, iPhone, that is the decade or so that tech became something that generally is understood to be today's culture, today's media.

And a lot of the problematic elements of Silicon Valley culture that was apparent back 10 years ago are much more widely understood in culture today because we see their dominance is so unavoidable. It's kind of amazing how much stuff actually happened around this time in 2010. For me personally, this is when I started my first podcast or, you know, the one that was the first version of what I'm doing now. It was on the radio station WFMU and it was called Too Much Information. And, you know, I remember specifically choosing that name because, you know, of the two things that I saw on a collision course. You know, on the one hand, we had companies like Google and Facebook and agencies like the NSA out there, you know, hoovering up as much information as possible in order to surveil and target people.

And then on the other hand, we had this, you know, new ethos in the air that, you know, sharing was awesome. Oversharing was even more awesome and privacy sucked. And, you know, I think even in 2010, I knew that, you know, we were on the verge of like a colossal, colossal train wreck. And I think that my show definitely made some contributions to the disaster reporting. But what I really wanted was to have critics on the podcast. But, you know, they were really hard to find, you know, because this was a period that was dominated by the techno-utopians. They were the ones who were writing for the few tech-oriented publications that were in business at the time. There weren't a lot of tech verticals. There weren't a lot of magazines. But those who did have those positions in the media, I don't understand quite why it was so oriented toward boosterism, other than perhaps people were very desperate

for somebody to be doing good since Wall Street had failed so overwhelmingly after the Great Recession. It could have been that. Yeah, you know, back in 2012 during Obama's re re-election campaign i think it hit me just you know how much crossover there was say between like the tech team for the campaign and then people who were working in silicon valley even at companies like google and facebook and twitter you know and looking back it makes sense why there was no regulation. Obviously, there was a lot of boosterism. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Who's friends with whom is forever a challenge in media. And I also have to say that at that period of time, in 2010, 2012 or so, we hadn't yet had as strong these public conversations about diversity in media. And to this day, efforts to be more inclusive have not necessarily worked as well as many of us might hope, but there is awareness and there is a conversation. And I think if you had far more diverse perspectives in say Wired magazine, even more women writing for them, which at that time, if you look at the

masthead of Wired in maybe 2010, there would probably be just a handful of women. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, one of the reasons I'm so happy to have you on this show, and I'm devoting this whole episode to just talking about you in your book, is that, as you just kind of point out, we were kind of waiting for tech criticism. We didn't really have it. And I know you hate this word as much as I did,

but I really feel like when I put the book down, I was like, finally, someone has written an actual real book of technology criticism. But are you cool with that label? I am cool with tech criticism. And it is funny because the reason this book is a history is because it's a history of pitches that I couldn't place anywhere. So it's just, it is a little bit of my story having difficulty being included in various publications and I didn't want this to be an I told you so kind of book I wanted this to be a genuine way for people to get up to speed and understand that this has been a long time coming you know it's interesting that you bring up the history of your own work because I know you know to speed and understand that this has been a long time coming. You know, it's interesting that you bring up the history of your own work, because I know, you know, having known you, some of these chapter titles of your book, Community,

Sharing, Accountability, are things you have put a lot of thought and care and work into over the years. But I want to bring it back to the present moment, because this sort of disaster that we're sort of experiencing right now, is there something about the particular moment of the present that's kind of helped with your perspective i have mixed feelings about that because i i felt sometimes the current scandals sometimes could distract me from the core elements of some of these platforms that make them dangerous. So the chapter that was the most difficult for me to write is the chapter Community, which is about Facebook. Because while I could have devoted pages and pages to that

controversy. However, I felt that the core elements of its problems, which I see is how it uses algorithms, how it prevents its users from seeing how it filters information for them specifically, that has been at the core of all of these problems since its inception, basically. And I had to go back all the way to its founding to show, look, there are going to be many scandals, there are going to be many things that look like we can regulate these problems away and just tactically resolve the issues. But the problem with Facebook is inherent to the service that it provides. Yeah. And I do think that's an important reminder. And, you know, I think one of the things I really love about your book is how much you insist on sort of taking us

back to these early moments when some of the stuff was being decided. But I also want to kind of relate some of the stuff to the present because, for example, one of the things I do, maybe when I'm feeling a little too self-destructive, I like to take the laptop out and start doing Google image searches of Trump supporters. I've been doing this a lot. And one of the things that's really struck me recently is how tech-oriented all the shots are. Every single Trump supporter has a fancy iPhone or an Android phone. And it's a reminder that, sure know, like, sure, while all this technology could be used for good, it could be used as a way to get us out of our filter bubbles,

and maybe connect ourselves to the larger world. It's not. We are in techno dystopia. But for some reason, you know, maybe because you're not looking at images of Trump supporters, you still seem to have a sense of optimism or I mean, and maybe that's the wrong word, but you're definitely not as cynical as I feel I am. And I guess I don't even know what the right word is. Well, yeah, I think there are still ways to use the internet in ways that are beneficial. and there are still ways to reclaim those spaces that were genuinely warm and inviting many decades ago. I look to things like my friend Darius Kazemi has a little platform on Mastodon, which is all of his friends and some friends of friends. And it's very casual. We know who owns it. We know who operates it. We know the users.

We have a trust in that community of just under 100 people. And something like that, I get so much out of it because I don't have to perform when I'm there. I don't have to worry about whether people are engaging with my posts enough or if I'm a big loser because only two people faved this instead of 20. I don't have those concerns at all. It's just about going to a website, talking with people who happen to not be in the same physical space as me, and having a lot of that conversation and the jokes that can only really take place in text I mean that's something that we haven't really gotten into in this conversation where like because it's so text-based it has its

own kind of humor to being on the internet things things like memes, things like images. And audio. Yeah, and audio and definitely audio. And all of those elements, using that to keep in touch with people that I can't just grab a coffee with because they're across the country. That is something that I would love to see more people have that experience because what I see a lot of, and this is also worthwhile too, what I see a lot of is people trying to shape the corporate

platforms for their own uses. So if you personally have some strategies in place that you can find privacy, create a locked account, follow only other friends of yours that have locked accounts. I mean, this is just a way to kind of circumvent some of the problems that you face, just using it for your own personal friend group. Whereas you think about friend groups or communities in general and physical world communities, these are decentralized by nature. You meet someone who seems very cool at an event and keep in touch with them, and maybe you don't see them as regularly as your best friend of many, many years, but this way of having people enter into our lives

and making space for new people and sometimes kind of distancing yourself when there is a problem with someone. That way of being elastic in physical world, I think there are ways to make that possible on the internet using technology that is not exploiting you, not encouraging you to post constantly. My general feeling is like there are ways to circumvent the negative aspects of social platforms like Facebook to minimize their harm on your community, on yourself. But I feel like that when we talk about minimizing harm, there's another opportunist that's kind of jumped in at this moment of necessity for criticism. And that's what I think you and I jokingly called them the tech apologist. Right. You know, these people who actually played a role and made a lot of money building tools that really addicted people and harmed people.

And now all of a sudden they've gone on the lecture circuit with their own book about like, what, apologizing? Yeah. And I feel like that's dangerous. Yeah, we've definitely talked about this. And I feel like the best perspective that I've heard about them comes from Kate Lossie, who was an early Facebook employee and wrote a memoir of her time that was very much underrated. When it came out in 2012, it was much too early. But the way that she has explained the tech apologists is that the project of Silicon Valley is complete.

Like we see Silicon Valley now as its own thing. Now it is like Wall Street. Now it's never not going to be something. So because of the power of that region, because of the power of what that word means, they can do this and hold on to their credibility. And of course, there's also the sense of being the stewards of the cleanup because they are the experts. They know these companies better than any of us. That's amazing. Yeah.

So it's like self-regulation is the same as a tech apologist. Yes, it's exactly what it is. And it's just, it's incredibly frustrating because in order to make these points, they have to erase all of the criticism that came before them. They have to pretend that they didn't know better, that no one raised these concerns when I know for a fact that people within the companies would raise concerns and be ousted inevitably. But the sense of the founders, the executives who are now apologizing, this is just another element of maintaining their own control,

maintaining their control over the controversies. One thing you come back to a couple of times in the book is this idea of the library, not just as the library as a metaphor, but also the fact that the internet lacks librarians. What do you want us to think about when we connect the librarians missing from the internet lacks librarians. What do you want us to think about when we connect the librarians missing from the internet? Well, I wanted there to be an understanding that what is missing is that care work inside a community. And of course, there's a lot of

incredible work like the internet archive that is archiving material, and my book probably wouldn't be possible without their existence, just that I was able to go back to a lot of communities that the URL is the dead link now, and I could plug it into the Wayback Machine and all of a sudden see how it was back in 96. That's incredible to me. But what I'd like to see is individuals who are that point person, not just concerned about the information and the care, but also the interactive, the elements of talking to other individuals. And if we want the internet to be beneficial for all of us, the library system is what we should be looking to for inspiration.

This episode is called Lurking. I almost went with dumb fucks, but, you know, we're just going to use the title of Joanne McNeil's book, which you can find wherever you get your books online these days. This episode was produced by me, Benjamin Walker, and Andrew Calloway. You can find us online at theoryofeverythingpodcast.com. The Theory of Everything is a proud founding member of Radiotopia, home to some of the world's best podcasts. Find them all at radiotopia.fm.

And lastly, a very special thank you shout out to Radiotopia donor Tom Croxton. Radiotopia. From PRX.