Lurking

With unflinching honesty and deep consideration for the internet’s paradoxes, Joanne McNeil views the history of the online user through various lenses. She reflects on how people engage with the internet and how the internet shapes the user – who, in turn, shapes the online universe. McNeil expresses disappointment at how companies like Facebook exploit users. She argues that “priceless experience” should be acknowledged for its true value, not broken down, monetized and sold back to users in a degraded form. In McNeil’s opinion, an ideal internet would be a civic body that values justice and human rights.

McNeil’s ease with the myriad paradoxes of the internet led Esquire to put this on its Best Books to Elevate Your Reading List in 2020; OneZero chose it as the Best Tech Book of 2020 and End of the World Review added it to its 100 Notable Books of 2020. McNeil was the initial recipient of the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation’s Arts Writing Award. She was a resident at Eyebeam, a Logan Nonfiction Program fellow and an instructor at the School for Poetic Computation.