july. five of the largest book have decided not to attend regardless bird bookstores are in the country are looking to provide remote services for the customers through online sales and virtual author events using platforms like crowd cast and zoom. star doors and moved online sales of also cut back on their staffing. many of the countries publishers have decided to delay the release of many books. some have laid off staff, and several book distribution centers have been temporarily closed. book tb will continue to bring you new programs and publishing news. you can also watch all of our archived programs anytime. at booktv.org. smack i'm very pleased introduce tonight's speaker joanne is the winner of the art writing fellowship award from she has been a resident and ibm, a nonfiction program felt an instructor at the school for poetic computation.

additionally her essays and reviews have appeared in publications such as a near time, dissents, wired, the globe, plus one and many others but she will be joining conversation this evening by kendra alber, clinical instructor and lecturer on law at harvard law school where they teach students how to practice technology law by work with pro bono clients. their work is on clinical -- facial recognition, computer security online harassment and freedom of expression. tonight they're going to discuss joanne's new book, lurking. it's called a poetic in incisive history of the internet that will resonate deeply with anyone who goes online to listen and learn. not shouting grandstand. never cynical nor deductive, mcneil has the commercialization of digital word it excite enter insightful ways. what has been stolen, what utopia possibilities might still be recovered.

workers of the world unite or at least in this book. we are excited to host this event here please join me in welcoming joanne and kendra. [applause] so okay i thought to start have a really brief i wanted to do so social read they are here or stand up is up to you. so i will stand up is just a short passage that will give you this sense of the side of the book. this is in a chapter called sharing. around the time of its first iphone launch in 2000 -- sorry -- around the time of its first smartphone launched in 2007, it was possible, if unwise, the talk about apple as an underdog. and adopt the corporations own narrative, a holdover since the famous 1984 inspired super

bowl commercial directed by scott featuring a bleach braun racing to attack "big brother" with a sledgehammer. in 2007, apple was ranked 367 on fortune's global 500. ten years later it was ninth on the list. between berkshire hathaway and exxon mobil. with the iphone apple was off to the races and a 2010 apple sold almost 40 million devices and by 2014, sales were just shy of 170 million. now the figure is north of 200 million new apple funds each year. the company, unique for its studious design approach product, developed a near universally acclaimed gadget both in function and appearance. a total, spying there for the 2t century. the iphone was gorgeous, intuitive, and was supposed to be handled like an intimate acquaintance. in time, people would learn about the loss of human lives

associated with the iphone's creation. it was too expensive certainly, but from the stage of macworld on generate 209th , 2007, steve jobs announced the future of the times. the iphone's first decade nearly paralleled barack obama's years in the white house. elected in 2008 obama left office in january 20, 1710 years after jobs presentation. barack obama was the first president to have a twitter account and the first use instagram. the founders of both airbnb and uber were in washington d.c. for obama's inauguration crashing in very different combination, friends, couches and upscale hotel room prospectively. independently they've talked about the experience with the eureka moments. the spark that crystallized into an idea for company. the corresponding timeline of obama and the iphone are

abundant pastors for future historians. but let's not forget that meanwhile there's a great recession. a lot of people carried fabulous magic phones too. in 2010 or 2011, it seems like all the ads in the subway were for apps. there for iphones and some android phones too. maybe it was the other way around. there's an app for that with an iphone slogan and there was very often prayed the iphone became common and every day like eyeglasses. but it felt for long well past the point of actually being new. apple's crowning achievement conjured up a can temporality, ten years after the phone hit shelves, people still talked about it like a new creation. the changes occurred and little icon boxes on little iphone screens. and the changes happened inside the peoples having their way with them. user change while the hardware for the most part did not. there are moments when i will pause and reflect on how powerful and world changing

iphone has been. like the time i happen to absorb someone at a grocery store using face time to talk to a friend in american sign language. before the iphone, people texted from clamshells and chocolate bar approximations. there contraptions that got the job done. in 2005 i picked up the slickest device in the t-mobile online store which came free with a two-year commitment. now i remembered that silver samsung flip about it so swells an old toaster oven. had it throaty shutter click like a power tool. my hand trembled a little when i pressed a button to take a photo. the badly compressed images looks like finger paints on a postage stamp sized screen. i don't think i ever bothered to upload any of the pictures to my computer. but the foam seemed good enough because i didn't think it had to be any better. the iphone came around just as that contract ended. i wanted one of course, i wanted it like a shinier paperweight. it would cost $500 and still

another two-year commitment. dissent e-mails and place calls coming key papers from blowing off my desk. what? i thought the difference between yeah thanks that was not to be funny. [laughter] [laughter] i thought the difference between a clamshell and an iphone was like the difference between economy of first class. lots of different street between two destinations. that autumn i signed up for focus group through craigslist. it was organized by local startup. i walked away with a tiny check in an iphone as a parting gift. there are several models and multiple contract renewals, it is 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 do people handle with such care? bodies. i started to go to bed with

that. it became a paperweight to rest on a pillow. then it seamlessly integrated into my daily life. so now i scarcely think of it. the same i don't think of my fork or what is on my plate. the world of it elsewhere in faraway became more immediate to the iphone. but the way of surrounding me in my periphery was less present, less urgent in the moment i wondered about. i found myself bumping into strangers more frequently. i grew less likely to notice landmarks on a walk in a new city. i never got bored waiting for train. i no longer dreaded sitting alone with a drink later friend was running late. i always had something to do, like focus on this screen could keep the bar of vultures away. i was never alone even when i wasn't using the phone to talk i would never alone. there is always this one little window between my thumbs. [applause]

>> host: i'm so excited to be in conversation with the about this book. i really loved and i am kind of thrilled i get to ask you questions about it. and with that, since you unluckily decided to put me up there with the i'm going to skip my first question and just go straight into my second period which is, you chose the title in the way defiant i can't can't do justice but i will try, is in the book itself is lurking can be a waiting room before communication and brief delay. like the brutal claim of an old dial-up modem found a moment to pause and prepare oneself for in exchange for others, to get one's feet wet before plunging into the network and its encasement and amplification of identity or could be an act like reading for work, reading, general curiosity prayed from the beginning, on that dial is internet working with the

custom. i am curious, what brought you to choose that is sort of the title for the book, the motivating sort of metaphor or way of engaging with the internet in the book? could you talk a little bit about that? >> guest: sure, thanks kendra. at some point the most obvious title for me, because that's what i do, that's my identity of an internet user, it's very much my internet use and very much being the wallflower of the social networks. the thing that makes the internet somewhat unusual though you're in a party, a wallflower is standing in the corner. you can easily be the creep. but people can't necessarily see you watching them and i think it's one of those things

that has to do with the elements that make interactions online somewhat unusual from physical world interaction. sometimes we take for granted how much our communication it's woven in our daily lives. that core difference is physical and visual world and actually want to make clear that title. so thank you. so you say you're looking at your preferred way of interacting with the internet. since she read a book about i get to ask you are there other specific places online that you choose -- that you sort of consider yourself a primary lurker, where are you lurking these days? so i have never had a reddit profile, but i spent a lot of time there. especially in the corners of a reddit that actually very sweet and unexpected. think there are some that are

very toxic and have problems. but there also some rednecks with people facing homelessness and its about exchanging resources with somewhat of a layer of anonymity. that's the place where is a lot about screen nays as opposed to real nays necessarily. so while i don't participate myself, i have worked on there i've worked on better filter, i worked on a lot of communities i find informational wise. in the book, i go through there's various chat rooms, before i would leave a post i would definitely spend possibly months making sure i would be welcome there. [laughter] 's mech i'm notice the title

is lurking and we have people lurking at the edge of the room. eunice it down your perfectly good to just like the internet we will make you participate in this particular way. i think that about reddit is so interesting because one of the sort of weird things that i also will admit, i am a reddit lurker. i read a firm with our legal advice as a lawyer. it's probably a form of sort of like showing critics i am showing myself as pain is reading other people i read a fair amount of i'm the apple. i think it's sort of funny because it has gotten -- a lot of people's way of interacting with this performer the internet is through twitter, despite the fact that his reddit will someone will post some very ridiculous in my the apple post? and then a lot of people respond on twitter. totally departed from the actual context in which the

actual post was made. so i know that is a classic example of how a conversation that was usually quite bizarre and he did in its own ways onto reddit's. if you take another platform like twitter, where there is already this kind of underlying ironing attached to it and you always have to be above the contents. i think that's what makes twitter kind of distinctive. you can't really be too sincere about things. what i think is incredibly funny about that in twitter, is that in the book i talk about when i first logged onto twitter, i always felt i was too much of a jerk for the social network. i remember feeling like look at all these nice people sharing what they are eating for breakfast and why am i not a nice person who would just freely share these peaceful moments of my life? why do i have to make my weird jokes? nowadays i feel like i am

overwhelmed with that kind of edge, that edge to the content. everything has to be almost like an element of distancing yourself from the platform. if you can laugh at everything, you're not so entwined, you have some layer of personal distance from what you're doing there. so in some ways i think lurking can be a way to distance yourself. i am not is invested as the people who are choosing the posts and is someone who is much about lurker online, it isn't a lack of -- and sonic a lack of investment i'm not less invested than the people to post in some senses i am more invested than the people who post. but i still like get that system sense of distance. so you start a frame to the book in terms of lurking, but

also in the of idea of becoming a user. one of the things you talk about, fairmount in the book, is facebook. which i thought was particularly interesting because of the off-line profiles. basically for those who unfamiliar, off-line profiles was like the ultimate in renaming because what an off-line profile is a some poor person who decided they didn't want facebook profile. and then facebook can instruct the profile for them from all the things they do even though they are not on facebook. so hard generally how do you think about ubiquitous tracking on the web? and how is that change the experience of being online. generally or lurking more specifically? so this another element of the title is lurking is not something that's possible on the internet, which is designed to track activity and have analytics, and all of those elements that are just part of the function of the social network.

especially something like facebook, where its profit is attached to having data on its users. so that's another element of where it has an advantage we can walk away without a trayce you could walk away from things and perhaps if we don't have a big queue it is the future. [laughter] 's so for this interview ai is like. [laughter] [laughter] it's a way of weeding without a trayce. so to switch topics little bit, one part of the book i read with a lot of interest, was a section on text which is a broader chapter which is entitled clash. so is someone who at times identified with that label, sort of actively new many of the persons you describe. i was really appreciating the

humility with which you approached it. specifically you say that you are going to resist the urge to leave a grand unified theory around why women and the tech community seem more likely than professional feminist commentators in new york to address intersexual concerns. so, i'm not going to ask you to lead the grand narrative but may be this seems little overly kind to me. you know, i look at the period of tech feminist organizing that you highlighted and actually see a real lack of attention to race and class analysis. that ended up bleeding over into what i would call the late women focus box checking we still see. the way in which there is a particular -- is very different but feminism as you've seen in a new york professional feminist commentators that you're contrasting.

but the same time, it is still a version of white feminism. certainly were bright spots of the key point out models there's a lot to be said about that. but, i would be curious about your process and thinking about that chapter is a real moment right think how not to come off as a sort of nostalgic aware the positive parts of the internet. more generally, how your views on that tech feminist, your own reflection on the tech feminist stuff. so absolutely that was an intense moment. it's an eye-opening one where the time i was based in new york, i remember elements of harassment became unavoidable on platforms like twitter and facebook. i found the professional

feminist media at that time, was not less thoroughly addressing some of the intersectional elements that went into the harassment. and some of the resources that i found, that were pertinent were things like feminism that had the resources that just seem to so much beyond, being a media presentation of gender and equality in time we can see that compounded with activism too. certainly black lives matter. i do remember, especially at the women's march in 2016, a

feeling like wow we've really come so far that a lot of basic understandings of inclusion that would have been quite radical three years prior, are accepted much more broadly. i am always hesitant to name certain factors more than others as to why that might be. i do think as problematic as twitter is an traumatic as the major platforms are, the nature of having something like twitter, where you have trending topics and someone could create a #. use that to discuss personal experiences of oppression. having that community elements

in a platform of design for multiple communities. to push forward some more progressive ideas. i say that with a lot of hesitation because for the most part, i feel those platforms that are designed for everyone are very dangerous. this is one of those trade-offs, it's a trade-off that because they you have a twitter account and you have many types of people, you probably follow a few people trans people, few people of backgrounds very, very different from yours. so seeing their experiences, seeing their experiences and their arguments are part of a conversation in the part of twitter that was having a #. disease solidarity for white women would be the key -- one

of the turning points for the # activism it is something that i don't discount but i don't accredit it too much. i don't to discount twitter's role, but i don't want to credit twitter because twitter certainly did nothing for that to happen. twitter is that company and did nothing for the user activism. >> the ability of folks on twitter, to use the platform for movements, organizing, finding audiences. that doesn't necessarily represent a credit to twitter represent a credit to those folks. i think your point about the way in which those folks may choose to follow people who aren't like them, or engage in different conversations was really interesting. i think one of the challenges of viewing yourself as a

worker as you can gain the false sense of familiarity with the things you experience through lurking just like you never actually interact with them. i think that is one of the tricky bits about, sort of using these online platforms as a way to understanding or relating to other folks experiences. it's much more familiar with them. think specifically lots of black folks online have talked about how they feel, and are treated by white listeners. i think jean denby which is the npr system protects but how he feels, lots of white folks who listen think he sees everybody's black friend. think there's a way that lurking can create that false sense of familiarity in the absence of any real relationship. and, which at the very least leads to awkwardness and at

most times can lead to people feeling entitled to other folks attention. though other reflection i want to offer on that, is that one of the challenges we have talked a little bit about, one of the reasons that tech feminism was acceptable and putting out materials of what people thought, was because they didn't need those materials to make money. it was like oh we can put this online for free. i do think one of the other challenges of lurking as it can be easy to appropriate or sort of not necessarily credit people's ideas if you are sort of experiencing them in this way that doesn't feel to you, it wasn't like i read the book i sought on twitter. so there's sort of a weird flipside to experiencing or inclusivity or understanding other people's experiences

through interacting with them from a distance. >> absolutely the example i think when i go back to twitter, we see plenty of tweets from people at airports, complaining about some service. we don't see tweets from airport workers. because they would get fired. so these platforms might be a representation of public opinions. but it is always a very privileged public opinion taken certain risks to share. that was the key part of this and that again with the trade-off, i feel like with the # activism, a lot of people made the decision that this is going to be a little embarrassing. but i have a community here, i have a moment, going to take advantage of it. it has always been the case,

with any type of social media or blogs, people substantially less power assistance -- gig economy workers a mean how many times have you seen people talk about their lift drivers on twitter and facebook. it's almost like the lift drivers do not exist on twitter. i know that part of that is my filter bubble. part of that is because i am following a very cultured timeline. but i also know that the opportunity to share this experience from being some is precarious is possibly not even breaking even. lift driving it's very much a last resort for people.

so that is one thing when everyone talks like twitter is a representation of real life. but it's always like a filtere filtered -- people of various forms of power choose to share. another thing is that there are still backgrounds with their strategies and tactics where people can take to be poorest enough to be open to the general public. so in the book i talked to someone who is a moderator for with a design for women in gaming. if you know anything about women and gaming you got to understand right it is not the friendliest place in the world for them. but at the same time you have to understand they don't to be so exclusive someone and a small town who knows no one else of these interest in their town, can't use the

internet to find their people, find their like-minded community. they want to be poorest enough to be open to their people somewhere out in the world. but also, have an amazed actual got to the more intense conversations. the conversations it still might not be completely unfiltered. but a little bit more loose and open than they would be on reddit. what they do is they submit a posting history to the moderator on reddit. if you show the posting at the way of showing your out there to troll there's a little bit more of a conversation. again it's one of those things it's possibly imperfect. there might be trolls who are creating accounts, faking their way just to get access.

but at least it is filtered the community enough, it is a tactic but not a solution. so thank you you set me up perfectly for my last question. : the magic of the internet because you are a better writer than i am. that is something that has been coming up for a lot of folks especially more recently. i think about platforms like mastodon, and someone who has been building communities across the globe. you have words of advice for people who are interested in engaging with smaller

communities or imagining the internet, engaging with the internet as it was? >> guest: there is a step-by-step guide called one-year-old social and he shares tactics creating an instance on mastodon, a decentralized social network. it has a lot of pluses and minuses. one of the drawbacks is it is hard to get everybody to get off facebook and go to the network that starts with people having been on this platform, schools, workplaces. for some people who are privileged they can go without having a facebook account, others are kind of forced into

participating and the sacrifice of having developed that account is too great but if you are in a place to build a community aligned with people you already know and you would like to not have your data taken for profit or exploited or leaked or all those challenging factors, data breaches and all of that, these are tactics, not necessarily solutions but it is worth looking into. sometimes if you don't feel you have the technical ability, even using some commercial platforms that have elements of the distance, the technique, the gaming community, a study

in moderation. this is one of the techniques that is easy to implement. something that is interesting about the internet that might not have been the case before, if you are a user you are also a moderator. at some point in your life you will see a conflict and possibly want to step in, whether it is neighbors who have gotten in a fight, what is that neighborhood apps? next door. >> that was with great cynicism. >> only neighborhood spats but in daily neighborhood activity,

you see people have conflicts, disengaged or de-escalate the situation and that is part of something we didn't talk about as much, the shift from the ultra exclusive internet to have the resources to afford to login and afford a computer, a significant percentage of the world. someone who uses the internet regularly, the sense of sharing the internet with many people who are not like you. it means 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. you will be signing them. copies are available for purchase. it is a beautifully written book. i can't recommend it highly enough. >> tonight on booktv in primetime science writer john tierney argues that our brains are wired to focus on what is bad rather than what is good. us with news and world report's kenneth walsh looks at how different presidents of handled crises, and the early twentieth century russian émigre rose pastor stokes who was a founding member of america's communist party. jonathan karl provides a behind

the scenes look at the trump administration, and books about the us economy. that starts at 7:00 pm, find more information on your program guide or online, booktv.org. >> we are showing some of the authors we have covered his books discuss disease and pandemics. doctor ali con, former director of the office of public health preparedness and response talks about why new diseases keep emerging. >> classical diseases, smallpox, measles, those started around the agricultural revolution when people came to gather. you needed to have people to spread disease from person-to-person so that is when i start my story of infectious disease. some rodents that were, and the virus made the jump and started

to cause smallpox in people, classic diseases. fast forward to the industrial revolution, they are due to protecting from person to person and a lot of enthusiasm that occurred in the beginning of the twentieth century with sanitation revolution, vaccines, antibiotics, we are done with the infectious disease problem. we just have to pop a shot in someone's arm, and they will be all better. if that was true we wouldn't be having this conversation today. we have these continued emerging infectious diseases. there are a lot of factors that drive those diseases. some of the key factors are

around microbes, somebody who thinks they are smart collectively and they have multiple generations with a single they. humans if we are lucky a generation, 35 years or something before we can swap out genetic materials, microbes no problem at all, they swap genetic material all the time, gets marty all the time and resistance microbes, that is what they do. they move around, a set of genes and this will protect me from this set of antibiotics and you have your superbug. humans change their behaviors. we change and our risks to infections change. the other thing is we change our environment. that is a big driver. it should not be surprising when i talk about the cut or ebola, very quickly the animal connection comes into play.

and the chain of transmission, 75% of diseases you hear about. and when you move people into the environment, it causes person-to-person transmission, from bats and candles, if you have contact with candles that is how you get the disease. it is not a surprise, they come from africa or south america or southeast asia and people in

china and other parts of southeast asia, close to their birds, it infects humans and prevent global pandemics. some set of environmental conditions, why we keep hearing about them. >> watch the rest of this program and find other books on pandemics visit our website, booktv.org. type pandemic and the word book into the search box at the top of the page. >> good evening. welcome to the american enterprise institute, director of social, constitutional studies. it is my pleasure to welcome you to a discussion of an important new book by my good