Breaking The Internet

Traditional media is over. The internet reigns. And in the attention economy, influencers are royalty. But who are they... and how do you become one? Break the Internet takes a deep dive into the influencer industry, tracing its evolution from blogging and legacy social media such as Tumblr to today's world in which YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok dominate. Surveying the new media landscape that the rise of online celebrity has created, it is an insider account of a trend which is set to dominate our future--the economy of influence will be valued at $15bn globally by 2022. Olivia Yallop enrols in an influencer bootcamp, goes undercover at fan meetups, and shadows online celebrities to understand how digital personas are built, uncovering what it is really like to live a branded life and trade in a "social stock market". From mumfluencers and activists to governments and investors, everyone wants to build their online influence. But how do you stay authentic in a system designed to commodify identity? Break the Internet examines both the dangers and the transformative potential of digital culture.

Examines the increasing problem of sexual abuse of children in the world and considers the legal and social strategies that are being adopted to combat these issues particularly in the area of the Internet where there is a growing number of Web sites devoted to child pornography and sexual perversion.

The Internet is often called a superhighway, but it may be more analogous to a city: an immense tangle of streets, highways, and interchanges, lined with homes and businesses, playgrounds and theatres. We may not physically live in this city, but most of us spend a lot of time there, and even pay rents and fees to hold property in it. But the Internet is not a city of the 21st century. Jeffrey Hunker, an internationally known expert in cyber-security and counter-terrorism policy, argues that the Internet of today is, in many ways, equivalent to the burgeoning cities of the early Industrial Revolution: teeming with energy but also with new and previously unimagined dangers, and lacking the technical and political infrastructures to deal with these problems. In a world where change of our own making has led to unexpected consequences, why have we failed, at our own peril, to address these consequences? Drawing on his experience as a top expert in information security, Hunker sets out to answer this critical question in Creeping Failure. Hunker takes a close look at the "creeping failures" that have kept us in a state of cyber insecurity: how and why they happened, and most crucially, how they can be fixed. And he arrives at some stunning conclusions about the dramatic measures that we will need to accomplish this. This groundbreaking book is an essential first step toward understanding the World Wide Web in a larger context as we try to build a safer Internet "city." But it also raises issues that are relevant far outside the online realm: for example, how can we work together to create not just new policy, but new kinds of policy? Creeping Failure calls for nothing less than a basic rethinking of the Internet — and of how we solve problems together.

Finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction: “Nicholas Carr has written a Silent Spring for the literary mind.”—Michael Agger, Slate “Is Google making us stupid?” When Nicholas Carr posed that question, in a celebrated Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply? Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind”—from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer—Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways. Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic—a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is that of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption—and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection. Part intellectual history, part popular science, and part cultural criticism, The Shallows sparkles with memorable vignettes—Friedrich Nietzsche wrestling with a typewriter, Sigmund Freud dissecting the brains of sea creatures, Nathaniel Hawthorne contemplating the thunderous approach of a steam locomotive—even as it plumbs profound questions about the state of our modern psyche. This is a book that will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.

You've heard the stories about the dark side of the internet--hackers, #gamergate, anonymous mobs attacking an unlucky victim, and revenge porn--but they remain just that: stories. Surely these things would never happen to you. Zoe Quinn used to feel the same way. She is a video game developer whose ex-boyfriend published a crazed blog post cobbled together from private information, half-truths, and outright fictions, along with a rallying cry to the online hordes to go after her. They answered in the form of a so-called movement known as #gamergate--they hacked her accounts; stole nude photos of her; harassed her family, friends, and colleagues; and threatened to rape and murder her. But instead of shrinking into silence as the online mobs wanted her to, she raised her voice and spoke out against this vicious online culture and for making the internet a safer place for everyone. In the years since #gamergate, Quinn has helped thousands of people with her advocacy and online-abuse crisis resource Crash Override Network. From locking down victims' personal accounts to working with tech companies and lawmakers to inform policy, she has firsthand knowledge about every angle of online abuse, what powerful institutions are (and aren't) doing about it, and how we can protect our digital spaces and selves. Crash Override offers an up-close look inside the controversy, threats, and social and cultural battles that started in the far corners of the internet and have since permeated our online lives. Through her story--as target and as activist--Quinn provides a human look at the ways the internet impacts our lives and culture, along with practical advice for keeping yourself and others safe online.

TikTok Made Me Bake It! Packed with the internet's most-loved recipes including Anti-gravity Cake, Rainbow Cupcakes, Bronuts and Cookie Pies, Bakes That Break The Internet is your guide to recreating the decadent and indulgent snacks from your For You Page at home. From nostalgic treats like Jammie Dodger Ice Cream and School Dinner Cake to jaw-dropping desserts like Nutella Freakshakes and Faultline Cake, @TheBakingExplorer shows us the simple recipes and techniques to impress your friends and satisfy your sweet tooth.

Literary Nonfiction. LGBTQIA Studies. Art. Performance Art. Hybrid Genre. Memoir. California Interest. Stephen van Dyck's PEOPLE I'VE MET FROM THE INTERNET is a queer reimagining of the coming-of-age narrative set at the dawn of the internet era. In 1997, AOL is first entering suburban homes just as thirteen-year-old Stephen is coming into his sexuality, constructing selves and cruising in the fantasyscape of the internet. Through strange, intimate, and sometimes perilous physical encounters with the hundreds of men he finds there, Stephen explores the pleasures and pains of growing up, contends with his mother's homophobia and early death, and ultimately searches for a way of being in the world. Spanning twelve years, the book takes the form of a very long annotated list, tracking Stephen's journey and the men he meets from adolescence in New Mexico to post-recession adulthood in Los Angeles, creating a multi-dimensional panorama of gay men's lives as he searches for glimpses of utopia in the available world.