The Tangled Web We Weave: Inside the Shadow System That Shapes the Internet

Journalist Ball (Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World) examines “the architecture of the internet—who built it, who governs it, how it works, and who owns it” in this knowledgeable yet lackluster account. Ball’s familiar history of the internet, from its beginnings as a collaboration between research universities and the U.S. Department of Defense to the advent of programmatic advertising, features interviews with “power brokers” including Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales, former Comcast public relations executive Frank Eliason, venture capitalist John Borthwick, and former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler. Though Ball notes that the people who have shaped the internet are “overwhelmingly Western and overwhelmingly male,” he only brushes on the ramifications of that fact, and allows his interview subjects to hype their achievements without providing much fact-checking. Ball lucidly explains the mechanics of networks, servers, and programmatic advertising, but blames media companies for “hastening their demise by participating in the data-driven ad world” without fully acknowledging the lack of choices they have. Skeptical of government intervention, he favors small policy changes such as “new contracts and worker protections” for tech industry employees and “requir[ing] algorithms to be independently tested and vetted for systemic inequality or biases.” This would-be exposé misses the mark. (Oct.)