"The Wired has just connected to something else all along. But then what was it made to connect to?" - Serial Experiments Lain
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INTERNET & CULTURE

SUBJECT GUIDE

A variety of texts exploring human relationships both with and through the Internet (and other communication technologies). Focus is mainly on the sociology, politics, and economics of the human-Internet ecosystem but there are other approaches and subtopics in this list as well. I gleaned a lot of these from the syllabus of a class I took during undergrad called "Digital Cultures," which thus serves as the core of this list, though I've since branched out beyond that.

General/Misc.

Barbrook, Richard & Andy Cameron. "The Californian Ideology." Science as Culture, 1996. | PDF
The quintessential takedown of the neo-liberal capitalist ideologies that fueled the development of the Internet and the hype surrounding it. Successfully predicted what the Internet has turned out to be 30 years later.
Dzieza, Josh. "The Cloud Under the Sea." The Verge, 2024.
A really engrossing (and beautifully designed) piece of journalism on Internet cable repair ships and the people who work on them. This article particularly focuses on the Japanese crews that kept the country in contact with the rest of the world in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake.
Galloway, Alexander. Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization.. The MIT Press, 2006. | PDF
An interdisciplinary exploration of how the very building blocks of the Internet (ie. code) relate to power, control, and authority. I haven't read the whole thing yet, but the few chapters I read for class were fascinating, if a bit dense.
Reidsma, Matthew. Auditing Algorithms in Commercial Discovery Services, 2018.
A great breakdown of how biases show up in algorithmic search engines and discovery services (such as those used by libraries) and their negative consequences. Also gives tips as to how to check for these biases in the services you or your workplace use.
Rose, Janus. The Digital Packrat Manifesto, 404 Media, 2025.
A quick & easy discussion of the ephemerality of ownership in the current digital era, and a compelling argument for curating & preserving your own digital archive rather than relying on access through accounts and subscriptions.
Sconce, Jeffrey. Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television. Duke University Press, 2000. | PDF
Explores the phenomenology unique to human-technological relations, particularly the ways in which new, "futuristic" technology interacts with the past and finds ways to haunt our culture(s). I have not read the whole thing yet, but I adore the chapter on radio communication and think about it regularly.
Terranova, Tiziana. "Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy." Social Text, 63, Vol. 18 (2), Summer 2000. | PDF
Analysis of labor exploitation in the Internet age. Predates the term "techno-feudalism" by over 20 years, but more or less describes that exact phenomenon.
Young, Damon R. "Ironies of Web 2.0." Post45, vol. 2, May 2019 | PDF
An apt analysis of post-irony and the obfuscation of meaning and intention in the Internet era.

AI-Critical Texts

Bansal, Varsha. "Meet the AI workers who tell their friends and family to stay away from AI", The Guardian, 2025.new
This article includes multiple interviews with different people who have worked as fact-checkers and trainers of A.I. for big tech companies like Google and OpenAI. These workers share the inner workings of these companies and technologies which cause them to distrust AI. They cite the lack of expertise of most of the AI trainers in the subjects they're expected to correct the AI on (like medical advice), the way the companies rush the tech in favor of profits rather than considering ethics, and how AI has grown more confident in its presentation of misinformation, rather than simply not generating answers when it doesn't know them.
Gebru, Timnit & Emile P. Torres. "The TESCREAL Bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence", First Mondays, 2024.
This article thoroughly identifies the ways in which the project of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is fueled and informed by the Anglo-American tradition of eugenicist ideologies; namely: Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism (TESCREAL). If you read only one thing about AI, it should be this.
Smith, Catherine. "Automating intellectual freedom: Artificial intelligence, bias, and the information landscape." IFLA, 2022 | PDF
This article specifically examines the risks of introducing AI into library environments, particularly with regards to how this technology may conflict with American libraries' stated value of preserving and promoting intellectual freedom.
Witt, Stephen. "Inside the Data Centers That Train A.I. and Drain the Electrical Grid.", The New Yorker, 2025.
This article investigates the data centers which have been established in order to train AI: the intensive labor required to run them, their impact on natural environments and human communities, and the economic bubble that the reside within.

Privacy & Surveillance

Anonymous. Who Are You Streaming For?: Three Criticisms of Livestreaming.
"Digital surveillance" is a common buzzword these days. This freely available zine explores concrete examples of it - particularly how the police utilize livestreams to suppress activism and the dangers of the culture of self-surveillance which has been engendered by the Internet.
Salo, Dorothea. "Physical-Equivalent Privacy", The Serials Librarian, vol. 81, no. 1, 2021. new
Written for the consideration of librarians and library workers, this article sets forth the ideal of "physical-equivalence" to evaluate whether third-party software/websites match up to libraries' strict privacy standards. Basically, if you would feel uncomfortable with somebody following you around the library taking notes about every single thing you pick up or read, you should also be critical of companies which do practically the same thing in the digital realm. This is by and for LIS professionals, but I think everyone could benefit from implementing a similar litmus test in determining what technologies to invite into their lives.

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