little things in a great way together we can end the fighting and the vitriol and we can start to do the things that we want out of our government and in our communities. it would allow us to have a healthier and a more together nation and neighborhood and family. to watch the rest of this program does our website book tv.org. .. .. she has been a real ibm and at the school for poetic computation. additionally your essays and reviews have appeared in publications such as a near

time, dissents, wired, the globe, and many others. she'll be joined in conversation this evening with kendra alberta clinical instructor at harvard law school where they keep school at a practice technology law by working with pro bono clients. covering topics such as facial recognition, on online harassment and freedom of expression tonight they're going to discuss joanne "lurking". old resonate deeply with anyone who goes online and learned not shouting grandstand. never cynical joanne mcneil trayce insightful ways. for what has been and what has been stolen and what utopian possibilities might still be discovered. we are so pleased to host this

event here at harvard bookstore tonight, please welcome me joining joanne mcneil and kendra alberts. [applause] i thought to start i have a really brief reading i'd like to do? should i read there? or here? or see that it's up to you. smack i will stand up it's just a short passage but it will give you a sense of the style of the book. this is in a chapter called sharing. around the time of its first iphone launch -- sorry, around the time of its first smart phone launch into thousand seven, it was possible, if unwise, to talk about apple as an underdog. and adopt the corporations own narrative, a holdover 1984 inspired super bowl commercial

directed by scott featuring a spy bond braun racing to attack with a sledgehammer. ten years later is ninth on the list. between berkshire hathaway and exxon mobil. with the iphone, apple was off the bases in 2010 and by 2014, sales were just shy of 170 million. now the figure is north of 200 million new apple phones each year. the company, unique for its fastidious design, developed a near universally acclaimed gadget both in social and appearance, totem, for the 20th century for the iphone was gorgeous, intuitive, and it was supposed to be handled like an intimate acquaintance. in time, people would learn about the loss of human lives so stay with the iphone's creation. it was too expensive certainly.

but of the stage of macworld on 2007, steve jobs announced the future of the times. the iphone's first decade nearly paralleled barack obama's ears the white house. election 2008, obama left office in january 2017, 10 years after jobs' presentation. barack obama was the first president to have a twitter account and the first use instagram. the founders about airbnb and uber were in washington d.c. for obama's inauguration crashing and very different accommodations. friends couches and an upscale hotel respectively. and independently they talked about the experience of the eureka moments, what crystallize into an idea for company paired the corresponding timeline of obama and the eye hone unchecked iphone are abundant pasturage for future historians. but let's not forget that meanwhile there is a great

recession. a lot of broke people carried fabulous master phones too. in 2010 or 2011, seemed like all the ads on the subway were for apps. then there were iphones in -- maybe as the other way around. there's an app for that too. the ad selling became common and everyday like eyeglasses, past the point of actually being new. apples crowning achievement conjured up a curious temporality. ten years after the phone hit shelves, people still talked about it like a new creation. the changes occurred a little icon boxes on little iphone screens. in the changes happened inside the peoples having their way at them. the user change, and the hardware for the most part did not. there are moments when i will pause and reflect on how powerful and world changing the five phone has been. like the time i happen to observe someone at the grocery

store raising face time to talk to a friend in american language. before the iphone, people texted through clamshells and chocolate bar, slip shot contraptions that got the job done. of 25, i picked up the slickest device and the t-mobile online store that came free with the two-year commitment. now i remember that silver sam sung flipped about as well as an old toaster oven. it had a 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 phone 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 but i wanted it like a shinier paperweight. it would cost $500 and still another two-year commitment to send e-mail in-place calls and

key papers are blowing off my desk? what? [laughter] thanks,. [laughter] that wasn't meant to be funny. [laughter] i thought the difference between a clamshell and an iphone was like the difference between economy or first class. not the difference between two destinations. that autumn i signed up for focus group through craigslist that was a local started. i walked up with a tiny check and an iphone as a parting gift. through several models and multiple contract renewals, it has been my hands, pocket, tote bag 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 it. 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 way i don't think of my fork that's on my plate. the world is elsewhere and far away, it became more immediate through the iphone. but the world surrounding me, my periphery was less present. much less present than the world i was wondering about. i found myself bumping into strangers. i grew less likely to notice landmarks on a walk in the art city. i never got bored waiting for a train, i never i no longer dreaded sitting waiting for friend a note bar his running late. i always had something to do. my focus on my screen. we could keep the bar. i was never alone when i wasn't using the phone to talk, never alone there was always this one little window between me and my thumbs.

[applause] >> host: i'm so excited to be in conversation with you about this book, which i really loved it i'm kind of thrilled i get to ask you questions about it. with that, since you unluckily decided to put me up here with the i'm going to skip my first question and go straight into my second period which is, you chose the title "lurking" for this book and the way you define lurking, i cannot do justice but i will try, is in the book itself lurking can be a waiting room before communication, and brief delay. like the brutal clang of an old dial-up modem sound. a modem unchecked moment to posit and prepare for an exchange with others. to get one's feet wet before plunging into the network and its encasement and identity. it's commit acts like reading for work, reading, general curiosity. from the beginning on that guileless internet lurking is understood as a custom. i'm curious what brought you to choose that is sort of the

title for the book, the motivating metaphor or way of engaging with the internet in the book? could you talk a little bit about that? >> sure, thanks kendra. well, it seems like the most obvious title for me is what i do it's my identity as an internet user. it is very much my process of internet use is very much being the wallflower of the social networks. and the thing that makes the internet somewhat unusual though, at a party a wallflower people see you standing in the corner and you can easily be the creep. people can't necessarily see you watching them. i think it's one of those things that has to do with the elements that make interaction

online somewhat unusual from physical world interaction. sometimes because we take for granted how much our communication -- maggots woven into our daily lives. that court difference of physical and digital worlds interacting i want to make clear in that title. >> host: you are saying lurking is your preferred way of interacting with the internet. since you wrote a book about it, i get to ask you. are there specific places online that you consider yourself primarily a lurker? where are you lurking these days? >> guest: i have never had a reddit profile. but i spent a lot of time in reddit. especially you can find things sweet and unexpected. there are sublet that a very toxic and have many problems. but there are also that are

created that people facing homelessness and it is all about exchanging resources with somewhat of a layer and enmity. it's a place where it is a lot about screen nays as opposed to real nays necessarily. why don't participate myself, i have lurked on their. there are a lot of communities that i find useful information wise. in the book i go through even the communities that are present, how there are various chat rooms and message boards. before i would leave a post, i would definitely spend possibly months making sure i would be welcome there. >> host: i'm noting the title is "lurking" and we have people lurking at the end of the room. if you're welcome to sit down

if you want to. just like the internet we will not make you participate in this particular way. [laughter] i think that point about reddit is so interesting. because one of the weird things that i also am a reddit lurker. there's a fair amount of legal advice as a lawyer. is just like sort of like causing critic i'm causing myself pain is set up viewing other people i read a fair amount. i think it's kind of funny because it has actually gotten -- it's a lot of people's way of interacting with this form of the internet is through twitter, despite the fact that it is reddit or people will post them in very ridiculous like here's the actual post and that a lot of people responded twitter. it's totally departed from the actual context in which the original post was made.

>> guest: that is a classic example of how a conversation that is usually quite bizarre and heated in its own ways on reddit but if you take it to another platform like twitter there is already this underlying irony attached to it and the fact that you always have to be above the content. i think that makes twitter distinctive you can't really be too sincere about things. what he think is incredibly funny about that and twitter is that in the book i talk about when i first went on twitter i thought i was too much of a jerk for social network. i remember feeling like look at all these nice people sharing with they have eaten for breakfast and why am i not a nice person who just freely shares these peaceful moments in my life, why do i have to make way weird jokes. nowadays i feel like i am overwhelmed with that edge to

the contents and everything has to be -- it's almost like an element of distancing yourself from the platform that if you can laugh everything you're not so entwined, gives some layer of personal distance from what you are doing there. >> host: i think lurking is a way to distance yourself you're not is invested is people who are choosing to post. also as someone who's much of a lurker online, it isn't a lack of -- it's not a lack of investment i'm not less invested than those who post some respects i'm more invested than those who post. i still get that sense of distance. so you sort of framed the book in terms of lurking but also in terms of becoming a user. you talk a fair amount in the

book about facebook, which i thought was particularly interesting because it features like the off-line probe to files. for those who are not familiar off-line profiles is the ultimate in renaming. because of what an off-line profile as is some poor person who doesn't want a facebook profile and facebook constructs the profile for them from all of the things they do even though they are not on facebook. so more generally how do you think of ubiquitous tracking on the web and how does that change the experience of being on the line generally or lurking more specifically question her two the other issue with the title "lurking" is something that's not possible on the internet which is designed to track activity and help with analytics, and those elements that are just part of the function of the social networks. especially something like facebook where it's platform

is attached to having data on its users. and so that is a another elements that it has an advantage you can have that without a trayce you can walk away from things. and perhaps if we don't have changes in the future. [laughter] >> to interview ai. [laughter] >> host: it's a way of leaving without a trayce. so let's switch topics a little bit one part of the book i read was a lot of interest of the chapter entitled clash. as someone who at a time identified with that label and actively new some of what you describe, i was really appreciated the humility of which you approach it specifically you say you're

going to resist the urge to weave a grand unified theory about why and the women in the tech community seem more likely than professional feminist commentators in new york talk about intersectional concerns. i'm not going to ask you to read the grand narrative, you avoid it. but to note this seems a little bit overly kind to me? that i look at the period of feminist organizing that you highlighted and there's actually a real lack of attention to race and class analysis. that ended up bleeding over into what i would call the pipeline problem we see it with how this suffers. with the way in which there is a particular -- it's a very late version of feminism that you might see in a new york professional feminist commentators your contracting. but at the same time it's a version of white feminism.

certainly there were bright spots, i think you point out models and cultural that are positive about that. but, i would be curious about your process and thinking about that chapter is like a real moment when you are reflecting on how not to just come off as nostalgic in a way that's ahistorical about the positive parts of the internet. more generally your views on that tech feminist stuff. >> absolutely that was an intense moment and an eye-opening one were at that time i was based in new york and i remember as elements as it became unavoidable on platforms like twitter and facebook, i found just like the professional feminist media at that time thoroughly

addressing some of the intersectional elements that went into this harassment. some of the resources i found that were pertinent were feminism that have the resources that just seemed so much beyond, being of course immediate presentation of gender and equality. that period of time we can see coincides with an activism to. certainly black lives matter. i do remember especially at the women's marsh in 2016 having a feeling like we have

come so far, a lot of basic understanding of inclusion that would have been quite radical three years prior art excepted much more broadly i am always hesitant certain factors is how that might be. as problematic as twitter is and is problematic as these major platforms are, the nature of having something like twitter where you have trending topics and someone could create a # and use that to discuss personal experiences of oppression and having that community element

in a platform that is designed for multiple communities and push forward progressive ideas. i say that with a lot of hesitation because for the most part, i feel that those platforms that are designed for everyone, are themselves very dangerous. this is one of those trade-offs. it's a trade-off if you have a twitter account and you follow many types of people, you probably follow a few trans people people with records very different from yours, seeing their experiences -- seeing their experience and their arguments are part of the conversation and the part of twitter that's having a #. so with white woman is the key of a turning point for a #

activism. it is something that i don't to discount but i don't want credit 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 a company did nothing for that user activism. >> the ability of black women on twitter to use the platform for movements, organizing, finding audiences doesn't necessarily represent a credit to twitter a represent the credit to those folks. your point about the way folks need to choose to follow people who aren't like them or be engaged in different conversations is really interesting. i think one of the challenges of kind of viewing yourself as a worker, is that you can gain a false sense of familiarity

with things you experience through working despite the fact you never actually interact with them. i actually 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. you can feel you are much more familiar with them. i think lots of black folks online have talked about they feel, and are treated by white listeners, jean denby which is the npr andres talks about how lots of white folks who listen is everyone's black friend. i think there's a way in which lurking can create that false sense of familiarity in the absence of any real relationship. and, which like at the very least leads to awkwardness and at most times can lead to people feeling entitled to

other folks attention. though another reflection i want to offer on that, one of the challenges we have talked a little bit about, one of the reasons that tech feminism was successful is they did not need those materials to make money. it was sort of like oh we can put this online for free. i do think one of the other challenges of lurking can be easy to appropriate or sort of not necessarily credit peoples credits if you're experiencing them in a way that doesn't feel to you like i read this book i saw it on twitter sort of a weird way of experiencing or inclusivity or understanding other people's experiences through

interacting with them from a distance. >> guest: absolutely the example i think of again going back to twitter is we see plenty of tweets from people at the airports complaining about some service elements. we don't seek tweets from airport workers because they would get fired. these platforms might appear to be a representation of a public opinion but it is always very privilege public opinion and it is a privilege it's a mistake and wrist to share think it's a really key part of this again with the trade-off i feel with a # activism a lot of people make the decision this is going to be a little embarrassing but i have a community, i have a moment a man take advantage of it. it has always been the case with any kind of social media,

blogs, people with substantially less power, assistance, gig economy workers, how many people complain about their lift drivers on facebook it's almost like the lift drivers don't exist on twitter. i know part of that is my focal bubble. i know part of that is because i am following a very filtered timeline, but i also know the opportunity to share this experience from being someone precarious is possibly not even breaking even, lift driving is very much a last resort for people. so that is one thing, every once in while people are said

twitter is a representation of real life but is always like a filtered -- it's what people of various degrees of power choose to share. another thing is there still back rooms of the strategies that people have to take to be porous enough to be open to the general public. so in the book i talk to someone who is a moderator with a design for women in gaming. now if you know anything about winning and gaming you have to imagine it is not the friendliest place in the world for them. at the same time, you have to understand that they don't want to be so exclusive that some kid in a small town who knows no one else with these interest in their town can't use the internet to find their people. find their like-minded

community. they want to be porous enough to be open to their people somewhere out in the world. but also have a little bit of a maze to get through to get to the actual more intense conversations. the conversation still might not be completely unfiltered but maybe a little more loose and open than they would be on reddit's. what they do is they submits opposing history moderator on reddit if you show me you've been posting it's a way to show you're not there to troll you get it in a discord server. there is a little bit more, of a deeper conversation. again that's possibly imperfect. there might be trolls who might be creating accounts, faking their way just to get

access. but at least it is filtered the community enough, it is set to active it's not a solution. sue and thank you set me up perfectly for my last question. i think to the extent your book has a take away message or hope for the future, it's about the power of small communities that sort of taught you -- you don't use the phrase the magic of the internet because you are much better writer than i am. that is been something that's been coming up for a lot of folks, especially more recently. i think about platforms i think about artists activist coders like darius who is been driven a lot of his attention recently to building community tools for jeff words of advice for people who are interested in looking to engage in smaller communities or imagining the internet engaging with the internet as it was?

>> terrorists has a step-by-step guide and share some of his tactics creating an instance on mastodon. mastodon is a decentralized social network. it has a lot of pluses and minuses. one of the drawbacks is that kind of hard to get everybody to just get off facebook and go to decentralized non- centralized network. the network of people having been on this platform schools and places for some people are quite privileged they can go without having facebook accounts. other people are kind of forced into participating. the social sacrifice of having to give up that account is too great. if you are in a place were trying to build a community

online with people you already know, and you want to not have your data for profit and exploited and possibly leaked all this challenging factors. data breaches all of that. again these are tactics not necessary solutions. it's worth looking into. sometimes if you don't necessarily feel you have the technical ability just using some commercial platforms that has elements of distance from -- that's a technique that the gaming community, she studied moderation.

this is one of those techniques that is very easy to implement. something i think it is very interesting about the internet right now which might not of been the case before if you are a user, you are also a moderator. you are also at some point in your life probably going to see conflicts and then you want to step in whether that's neighbors have just gotten into a fight on was that neighborhood app? next door. you see some people smack that was voice said with great cynicism. [laughter] >> guest: that's basically like only neighborhood spats. but in the daily internet activity you'll possibly see people have conflicts and perhaps you are in a place to

help disengage, to de-escalate the situation. that's part of having and one thing we didn't talk about as much is a shift from the altar exclusive internet where you had to have the resources to afford to log in, to a computer. to this time now with a significant percentage of this country in the world how the uv internet and use the internet regularly. so as to share the internet space with many people who are not like you. it doesn't mean there's conflict if you are in a place where you can make it a little bit nicer, just do it you can. sue at great, thank you so

much for speaking about your book thank you for writing it. going to be citing them, copies are available for purchase over there. it's really a beautifully written book i can't recommend it highly enough. [applause] so at a recent event held at the american enterprise institute in washington d.c., national review editor rich lowry offered his thoughts on nationalism. here's a portion of the program. >> the way i think at this, the book was occasioned by trump. i hadn't really thought about nationalism i'd sort of shared the lazy assumption that it's a dirty word until trump's inaugural address got me thinking about a little more. i think what has happened is democrats, although they have a naturalist tradition and their not so distant past totally turned their back and

have gone towards a cosmopolitan progressivism and the republican party also lost touch with nationalism. i think under the influence of a libertarianism the markets of the border with the influence of business elite that's a little more transnational in its orientation, samuel huntington that late social scientist talked about in the 19th century there's a physical innovation and technological changes that created a national affiliation over and above local attachments and local affiliations. in the late 20s and 21st century that was the same kind of technological and it's created more of a transnational attitude. finally, george w. bush is over idealistic emphasis on his foreign policy. i think that all of it made the party lose touch with nationalism to some extent. you had this kind of baton on the floor.

trump picks it up impulsively, extensively, accidentally, whatever it is. so that accounts for a lot of the debate. it goes a lot deeper than trump. brexit was a major event. that happened before the election of donald trump. just goes to this question that you, they think it's nationalism in the nationstate that causes the agony of the 20h century. those forces have to be effaced and subsumed in towards a neoimperialism project that has a dream of united europe goes back to rome napoleon hitler obviously much more benign version of it than those. britain when faced with the question, should a significant part of your sovereignty be

run out of brussels? or why semester and that's an nationalistic answer and just goes to how this is a broader phenomenon then just trump even though trump is driving the debate. >> if trump is driving the debate does that mean the key for nationalism has to somehow bear the burden of trump is him? >> you have to answer for some of the things about trump is that are what you would to suggest the book are not nationalism. to act that should not be associated with nationalism. so definitely so i think with trump if you get trump in the teleprompter and you listen to some of the things he says at un, some of the things he said at poland in his war's engine is there true i think the polin speech is the best speech of his presidency in advance that poland since in the west under a worse place you can in europe and has been overrun by foreign occupied armies and partitioned over

the years and subjected to the unspeakable horrors during the h century, poland has never gone away because of what in essence, the polls are so polish and that is essence of poland. it's the one common strain there might be between russo and trump. so in the 18th century road at a time when it was occupied by russia, six introduction, six or more a stick to your culture they will never be able to absorb you and that's absolutely true it's a deep and moving truth. the problem obviously is trump once he gets off the teleprompters in the wild, it's nothing like this. the unifying potential of nationalism is something above sacked, it's above race it's above partisanship. and to say trump slights the unifying potential of nationalism is an

understatement, you can come up with many examples, just two months ago when he was briefly at war with the city of baltimore, he tweeted no human being would want to live in west baltimore. the fact is human beings do live in west baltimore they aren't human beings they are americans donald trump is the head of state for the united states of america. in just too often that does not seem to make any impression on him. so to watch the rest of this talk into find out other c-span appearances by rich lowry, visit our website booktv.org. and search his name using the box of the top of the page. >> next on book tv colonial historian mary beth norton looks at 1774 the lead up to the war. after that columbia university professor reports on the social roots of sexual assault on college campuses. and later, we t