Reporting on the issues facing the workingclass in rural america, enjoy booktv now and over the weekend on cspan2. Joining me is the author of the Fellowship Award for emerging digital arts writers. A resident at ibm, and instructor at the school for a poetic computation. They have appeared in publications such as the new york times. She will be joined in conversation by a clinical instructor and lecturer on law at Harvard Law School when they teach tubes to Practice Technology law, there are critiques, technology and law. Covering topics like facial recognition, computer security, online harassment, they will discuss joanns new book lurking how a person became a user, and incisive history of the internet that will resonate deeply with anyone who goes online to listen and learn, not shout and grandstand was never cynical more reductive, she faces the commercialization of the digital world, in an unexpected and insightful way, revealing what has been lost, what has been stolen and what impossibilities may still be regarded as workers of the world unite. We are pleased to host this event, please join me in welcoming Joanne Mcneil and kendra albert. [applause] i have a brief reading. Should i read their . It is a short passage. I will give you a sense of the style of the book, this is a chapter called sharing. Around the time of its first iphone launch sorry. Around the time of its first smartphone launch in 2007 it was possible if unwise to talk about apple as an underdog and adopt the corporations narrative, a holdover since the famous 1984 inspired super bowl commercial directed by ridley scott featuring a bleach blonde racing to attack big brother with a sledgehammer. In 2007 apple was ranked 367, ten years later it was ninth on the list, between Berkshire Hathaway and exxon mobil. With the apple, it was off to the races, and almost 40 million different places. By 2014 sales were just shy of 170 million. Now the figure is north of 200 million apple phones each year. The Company Unique for its the steadiest design product developed a near universally acclaimed gadget in function and appearance, a totem for the 21st century, the iphone was gorgeous, intuitive, and supposed to be handled like an intimate acquaintance. People would learn about the loss of human lives associated with the iphones creation. It was too expensive. Steve jobs announced a feature of the times. The iphones first decade nearly paralleled Barack Obamas era in the white house. Elected in 2008 Obama Left Office in january of 2017, ten years after the presentation. Barack obama was the first president to have a twitter account in the first to use instagram. The founders of air b b and huber were there for the inauguration in very different accommodations, friends couches and of scheduled hotel room respectively. Independently they talked about the experience as a eureka moment, the spark that crystallized into an idea for company. The timeline of obama and the iphone, there is abundant pastorate for future historians but lets not forget there was a great recession. A lot of broke people carried fabulous magic bones too. In 201011 it seemed all the apps some android phones, maybe it was the other way around. There is an apps for that was an iphone slogan and it was very often. The iphone became common as eyeglasses but it felt new for a long while past the deck of actually being new. Apples crowning achievement conjured up a temporality, ten years after the phone hit shelves people still talked about it like a new creation. The changes occurred in little icon boxes on the live phone screens and the changes happened, users changed, the hardware did not. There are moments i will pause and reflect on how powerful and world changing the iphone has been like the time i observed someone at a Grocery Store using face time to talk to a friend in american sign which. Before the iphone people texted from clamshells and chocolate bar approximations, slipshod contraptions that got the job done. In 2005 i picked up the slickest advice from the tmobile iphone store which came with a commitment but now i remember that slip as well as an old poster revenue, shutter quick like a power tool, my hands trembled when i pressed a button to take a photo. The badly compressed images looked like finger paint on a postage stamp sized screen. I never bothered to upload any of the pictures to my computer but the phone seems good enough because it didnt have to be any better. The iphone came as the contract ended. I wanted one like a shinier paperweight. It would cost 500 and another 2year commitment to send emails and keep papers from blowing off my desk. The difference between yes. Must be funny. I thought the difference between a clamshell and an iphone was the difference between economy your first class, not the difference between the two destinations. That are my signed up for a focus group organized by a local startup. I walked away with a tiny check and iphone as a parting gift. Through several models and multiple contract renewals it has been my hand or pocket or totebag ever since. The tactile quality conjured up feelings of intimacy and trust. I held the iphone so gently at first, like applying eyeshadow with my fingertips, the lightest touch, what else to people handle with such care . Bodies. I started to go to bed with it. It became a paperweight to rest on a pillow. Then it seamlessly integrated with my daily life. Now i scarcely think of it. The same way i dont think of my fork or what is on my plate. The world of elsewhere and far away became more immediate through the iphone but the world surrounding me was less present, less urgent than what i wondered about. I found myself bumping into strangers more likely. I found myself was likely to notice landmarks. I never got bored waiting for a train, no longer drove with friends running late. I had something to do, my focus on the screen, i was never alone even when i wasnt using the phone to talk, never alone. There was one little window in between my phone. [applause] i am excited to be in conversation with you about this book which i really loved and kind of thrilled i get to ask you questions about it. With that since you decided to put me here with you i decided to skip my first question and go straight to my second which is you chose the title lurking for this book, a waiting room before communication, brief delay like the brutal claiming of an old dialup modem the sound, a moment to pause and prepare for an exchange with others, to get ones feet wet before plunging into the network and its amplification of identity or to be an act like reading for work or researcher general curiosity. From the beginning on that stylus but no less for the internet, it is the custom. I am curious what brought you to choose that as the title for the book, the motivating metaphor or way of engaging with the internet. Could you talk a little bit about that . Guest it seemed like the most obvious title for me because that is my identity as an internet user. It is my process of internet use, very much being of the wallflower of the social network and the thing that makes the internet is unusual, it is in the corner and people cant necessarily see you watching them and it is one of those things it has to do with the elements that make interactions online unusual from physical world interactions. We take for granted how much our communication is interwoven in our daily lives. That core difference of physical world interaction i want to make clear in that title. You say lurking is your preferred way of interacting with the internet and since your book about i get to ask you are there specific places online you consider yourself primarily a lurker . Where are you lurking . I never had a redif profile but i spent a lot of time on redit. In the corners of redit that are very sweet and unexpected. I think there are parts that are toxic and have problems but also some that are created that people facing homelessness and exchanging resources, somewhat of a layer of anonymity. That is the place where it is about screening as opposed i dont participate myself but i have worked around meadow filter, there is useful information and then the committees how various chat rooms and message boards, before i would leave a post i would spend months making sure i would be welcome there. Host noting that the title is lurking how a person became a user we have people lurking at the edge of the room. If you would like to sit down you are welcome to. Just like with the internet we wont make you participate. The point about redit is interesting, one of the weird things i will admit i am a redit lurker. A lot of legal advice as a lawyer, probably sort of like causing myself pain, i read a fair amount of it, it is sort of funny because it has gotten a lot of peoples way of interacting through twitter where someone will post a very ridiculous post, totally departed from the actual context in which the cusp is. Guest a classic example, really quite bizarre and heated. Another platform where there is already this iron he attached to it, that makes twitter distinctive. You cant be too sincere about things and what is funny about that and twitter is in the book i talk about when i logged on to twitter i am too much of us jerk for social network, look at all these nice people sharing what they are eating for breakfast, why am i not a nice person who can freely share these peaceful moments, why do i have to make my weird jokes and i feel i am overwhelmed with that edge to the content, everything, it is an element of distancing yourself from the platform, if you can laugh at everything you are not so entwined, you have some layer of personal distance to what you are doing there. In some ways lurking can distance yourself. Im not isnt listed as people who choose the posts. As someone whos not much of a lurker online, it isnt black, not lack of investment. Im not less invested, i am more invested than people who post but i get a sense of distance. You frame the book in terms of lurking but also this idea of becoming a loser user. One of the things you talk about is facebook which is interesting because the offline profiles. The ultimate renaming, what an offline profile is, someone who decided they didnt want to facebook profile and facebook construct the profile from all the things they do. More generally how do you think about tracking on the web . How has that changed the experience of being online generally are working more specifically . Lurking really is not possible on the internet which is designed to track activity and have analytics, and the function of the social network. As attached to data on its users, that is another element of where they have advantages. You can leave without a trace, you can walk away from things, perhaps if we dont have ubiquitous surveillance cameras of the future. Host with ai it is hard way of having without a trace. With the section, a broader chapter, identifying with that label that you describe was really appreciating the humility. You say that you resist the urge to weave a grand unified theory around why women seem more likely than professional feminist commentators in new york to address intersectional concerns. Im not going to ask you to read the grim narrative. Notes the theme is overly kind to me. I look at the period of organizing you highlighted and the lack of attention to race and class analysis that bled into what i call the white woman focus that we see. The way in which there is a different version of white feminism than you might have seen in new york professional commentators but at the same time, a version of white feminism. Certainly there were bright spots, there is a lot to be said about that but i think i would be curious about thinking about that chapter is a moment you are reflecting on not coming off cross as nostalgic. More generally how your reflection on that is. That was an intense moment and an eyeopening one. They are unavoidable on platforms like twitter and facebook. The professional feminist media at the time was not addressing the intersectional elements that went into harassment and some of the resources that i found that were pertinent, that wiki resources that seemed so much, this being a media presentation of gender and activism, certainly black lives matter, i do remember especially at the womens margin 2016 having a feeling like weve gotten so far that a lot of basic understandings of inclusion that would have been quite radical are accepted much more broadly. I am always hesitant to name certain factors more than others, as problematic as these are, the nature of having Something Like twitter where you have trending topics and use that to discuss personal experiences of oppression and having that Community Elements in a platform designed for multiple community is pushed forward some progressive ideas but i say that with a lot of hesitation because for the most part i feel those platforms designed for everyone are very dangerous and this is a tradeoff that you have a twitter account and have many types of people you follow few people of color, a few people from backgrounds very different from yours. Seeing their experiences, and their arguments as part of the conversation in the part of twitter having hashtag, the key turning point, it is something i dont want to discount twitters role but dont want to credit twitter because twitter did nothing for that to happen, twitter the company did nothing for actor. Host folks on twitter to use the platform for movements, organizing, finding audiences does not represent the credit to twitter but to those folks. Your point about the way that folks choose to follow people who arent like them is interesting because one of the challenges of labeling yourself a lurker is you can gain the sense of familiarity. I think that is one of the tricky bits of using these platforms as a way of understanding or relating to other experiences, you feel, they feel like and are treated by white listeners. Code switch, lots of white folks think he is everybodys black friends and there is a way in which lurking can create the sense of familiarity in the absence of that relationship and at the very least lead to people feeling entitled. The other reflection we want to offer on that is one of the challenges, they make money and we can put this online for free and one of the other challenges of working as it can be able to appropriate, not to credit peoples ideas. It doesnt feel to you like i read this and i saw it on twitter. There was the flipside and inclusivity other peoples experiences through interacting with them. Going back to twitter, we see plenty of tweets from people at airports complaining about some service elements. We dont see identifiers. These platforms might appear to be a representation, the Public Opinion has taken certain risks. That is a key part of this with the tradeoff. They made the decision is a little embarrassing, i have a community here that i will take advantage of. Is substantially less power. Gig economy workers, you see people complain about lift drivers on twitter and facebook. It is almost like they dont exist on twitter and that is my focus because i am following a timeline but i also know that the opportunity to share this experience, possibly not breaking even, kind of very much a last resort for people and so that is one thing because of the way twitter is a representation of reallife, it is what various degrees of power choose to share. Another thing is strategies and tactics people can take to be porous enough to be open to the general public. In the book i talk to someone who is a moderator, design for gaming. Youve got to imagine redit is the not the friendliest place in the world for women but at the same time you have to understand they dont want to be so exclusive that some kid in a small town who knows no one else with these interests cant use the internet as fast and find likeminded community. They want to be porous enough to be open that there are people somewhere out there in the world but also have a maze to get through to get to more intense conversations that still might not be completely unfiltered but are more loose and they would be on redit. They submit a posting history to the moderator on redit. If youre posting consistently and not there to troll, you will get an invite to a discord server and their is a little bit deeper conversation and there might be trolls that are just creating accounts, making their way to get access but at least it is filtered the community enough. It is a tactic, not a solution. You set me up perfectly. To the extent your book has a take away message or hope for the future it is about the power of small communities like the ones that taught you. I dont think you are as you dont use the phrase the magic of the internet because you are a better writer than i am. That has been something coming up for a lot of folks especially more recently, i think about artists, activists, during a lot of attention recently to Building Community tools. Do you have words of advice for folks are interested in looking to engage with smaller communities are imagining the internet like engaging with the internet as it was . Absolutely. A step by step guide called your own social, he shares his tactics creating an instance on mastodon, a decentralized social network that has a lot of pluses and minuses. One of the drawbacks is it is kind of hard to go to a decentralized social network, people having been on the platform, schools and workplaces, many things. For some people who are quite privileged they can go without having a facebook account. Other people are forced into participating. The social sacrifice of having to give up that account is too great but if you are in a place you are trying to build a Community Online with people you already know and you want to move, you would not like to have your data taken for profit and exploited or all of those challenging factors, data breaches and all of that. These are tactics, not necessarily solutions but it is worth looking into and sometimes if you dont necessarily feel you have the technical ability, even using some social platforms that have elements of distance from the general feeds, i really think that technique, the gaming community, a study in moderation, is practical for it and this is one of those techniques that is very easy to implement because Something Interesting about the internet right now that might not have been the case before, if you are a user you are also a moderator. At some point in your life youre probably going to see a conflict and want to step in, whether that is two neighbors who have gotten in a fight on that neighborhood apps, next door. If you see some people that was a voice of the way next door was set up. It is not a recognition. Guest basically only neighborhood spats but a things that in your Daily Internet activity you will see people have conflicts and perhaps in a place to help them to disengage, deescalate the situation and that is part shift from this ultra exclusive internet to have the resources to afford, to afford to login, to afford a computer, time now that a significant percentage of this country, the world, use the right internet regularly. That sense of needing to share this internet platform with many people who are not like you, does inevitably mean conflict and if you are in a place to make it a little bit nicer, do what you can. Host thank you for speaking about your book, thank you for writing it and you are going to be signing them i understand, copies are available for purchase over there. It is a beautifully written book. I cant recommend it highly enough. [applause] you are watching a special edition of booktv now airing during the week while members of congress are in their districts due to the coronavirus pandemic. Tonight, life in america. Enjoy booktv now and over the weekend on cspan2. Good morning, everyone. More people are expected to arrive but i think i saw Michael Waller in the back becoming shy. The walton centers best supporter on the