she told me her life -- a cliché of everything wrong that can happen and eventually i asked about a photograph, how to you want me to describe you and she shot back as what i am, a prostitute, a child of god. >> sunday on q and a. now joanne mcneil, author of "lurking: how a person became a user," describes how internet use shifted from being individualistic, spontaneous and voluntary to being data and advertising driven and dominated by corporations. >> joanne mcneil with the fellowship award for emerging

digital arts writer from the art foundation, she has been a resident, nonfiction program fellow. her essays and reviews have appeared in publications by the new york times, defense wired the globe and others. she will be joined in conversation by kendra albert, a lecturer on law at harvard law school where they practiced law, their work reflects on technology and law covering topics like facial recognition, computer secure, online reaction and tonight they are going to discuss "lurking: how a person became a user". a poetic, empathetic and incisive history of the internet that will resonate with anyone who goes online to listen and learn, not shout.

joanne mcneil traces it in playful ways revealing what has been lost, what has been stolen and what utopian possibilities may still be recovered. lurkers of the world unite. we are pleased to host this event at harvard bookstore, please join me in welcoming joanne mcneil and kendra albert. [applause] >> to start i have a brief reading. i will stand up. just a short passage that will give you a sense of the style of the book, this is an issue after called sharing. at the time of the 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 their own narrative, hold ever since famous 1984 inspired super bowl commercial directed by ridley scott describing taxing big brother with a sledgehammer. in 2007 apple was ranked 367 on fortune's global 500. 10 years later it was ninth on the list. between berkshire hathaway and on mobile. with the iphone, apple was off to the races. in 2010, apple sold 40 million and by 2014, 179 million. the company unique for its design product to develop a

universally acclaimed gadget in function and appearance. the iphone was gorgeous, and intimate acquaintance. in time, loss of human lives associated with the iphone's creation. from this stage january 9th, 2007, steve jobs announced the future of the time. it parallels barack obama's years in the white house electing 2008, obama left office in january of 2017 ten years after the presentation. the founders of air b&b and huber for the inauguration crashing in different accommodations.

independently they talked about the eureka moment, the spark that crystallized into an idea for a company. in this, let's not forget there was a great recession, a lot of broke people carried magic phones too. in 2010-2011 it seemed all the straphangers, and maybe it was the other way around. that was an iphone slogan and there was often the iphone became common every day like - past the deck of actually being new. it conjured up the temporality, ten years after the phone hit shelves, the changes occurred

in little icon boxes. users changed and hardware for the most part did not. how powerful and world changing the iphone has been, like when i observed someone in a grocery store, talking to a friend in america's sign language. before the iphone people texted from clamshells and chocolate bars, slipshod contractions getting the job done. i picked up the slickest device from the t-mobile online store which came free with a 2-year commitment but now i remember the silver one, like an old toaster oven. 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 looked like marin finger paint on a postage stamps sized screen. i don't think i ever bothered to upload any of the pictures

but the phone was good enough not to be better. the iphone came around as the contract ended. i wanted one but i wanted it like a shinier paperweight. it would cost $500, to send emails in place called and keep papers from blowing off the desk. i found the difference between, between economy and first-class. lots of differences between two destinations. and walked away with tiny check as a parting gift. through several models and multiple contract renewals. the tactile quality conjured up

feelings of intimacy and trust, applying eyeshadow with my fingertip with the lightest touch. what else do people handle, started to go to bed with it. it became a paperweight and then seemed seamlessly integrated with my daily life. the same way i don't think of what is on my plate. it became - in the periphery, was less present, less urgent in the moment i wondered about. i found myself bumping into strangers, i grew less likely to notice landmarks, and what you say is running lake. my focus on the screen, i was never alone.

there was no longer one little window in between my phones. >> i am so excited about this book which i really loved and thrilled i get to ask you questions about it. since i am going to skip my first question, you chose the title "lurking: how a person became a user" for this book and the way you define lurking which i can't do justice but i will try, lurking can be a waiting room before communication and brief delay like the brutal clang of an old dial-up modem sound, for in exchange with others before

plunging into the network with application of identity for work or researcher general curiosity. from that no less thorny interests -- internet. i am curious what brought you to choose that, the motivating metaphor or way of engaging, can you talk a little bit about that. >> it seemed the most obvious title for me because that is my identity as an internet user, the process of internet use is very much the wallflower of social networks, the thing that makes the internet unusual, people can see in the corner,

people can't necessarily see you watching them. it is one of those things that has to do with the elements that make interactions online unusual from physical world interactions because we take for granted how much communication is woven in our daily lives and the core difference of world interactions in that title. >> you say lurking is your preferred way of interaction with the internet, there are specific places online you consider yourself primarily a lurker. where are you lurking these days? >> i never had a redit profile but i spent a lot of time on

redit and especially the corners of redit bittersweet and unexpected and there are sub redits that have many problems and some are created, people facing homelessness and exchanging resources, somewhat of a layer of anonymity because that is the place where as opposed to what is necessary, i don't participate myself, worked on meta-filter. there are a lot of communities i find useful information wise and then in the book i go through how various chat rooms and message boards before i

would leave a post, possibly months making sure i would be welcome there. >> i am noting the title is "lurking: how a person became a user". you are welcome to, with the internet we won't make you participate. and a fair amount of legal sites and causing myself pain, viewing other people and read a fair amount of it. it is sort of funny because it is a way of interacting with

this particular form of the internet and people will post some very ridiculous am i the ass hole posted people respond on twitter and the actual context of with the initial post would mean. >> that is a perfect example of a conversation that is usually quite bizarre and heated in their own ways on redit but another platform like twitter where there is an underlying irony attached to it, you have to be above the content and that makes twitter distinctive. you can't be too sincere about these things. what is funny about that, i talk about when i first went on to twitter i was told i was too much of a jerk for a social network. i felt like look at these nice

people sharing what they are eating for breakfast. why am i not a nice person who can freely share these peaceful moments of my life? why do i have to make my weird jokes? now i am overwhelmed with that kind of edge to the content that everything, element of distancing yourself from the platform that if you can laugh at everything you are not so entwined, you have some layer of personal distance from what you are doing. >> host: lurking is a way to distance yourself. i'm not is invested as those who chose the post and it wasn't a lack -- not a lack of investment. i'm not less invested than the

people who post. i suspect i'm more invested than the people who post but i get the sense of distance. you frame the book in terms of lurking in the idea of becoming a user. something i talk about is facebook which i felt was particularly interesting because it features off-line profiles of those are unfamiliar - the ultimate sort of renaming. with the off-line profile is, people don't want a facebook profile and facebook construct the profile for them of all the things they do even if they are not on facebook. how good his trafficking on the web and how has that changed the experience of being online or generally lurking more specifically? >> that is another element of the title, it is not something that is possible on the internet which is designed to

track activity and those elements the eleventh of the social networks, especially something like facebook if attached to having data. so that is an element of advantages where you can leave without a trace, you can walk away from things, if we don't have ubiquitous surveillance cameras in the future. >> host: like ai. >> guest: no it isn't. >> host: with other traces. the switch -- to switch topics a little bit, one part of the book i read with a lot of interest was your section on tax feminism which is part of a

broader chapter entitled clash. as someone who at times identified with that label and actively many participants you described i sort of was appreciating the humility with which you approached it. you say you are going to resist the urge to leave a grand unified theory why women in the tech community seems more likely than professional feminists commentators in new york to address intersectional concerns. .. what i i would call the white women focused pipeline diversity box checking will still see with conferences. the way in which there's a particular, it's a different

version of white feminism which might've seen in a sort of new york professional feminist commentators, but at the same time it's still a version of white feminism. certainly there were bright spots. i think there's a lot to be said deposit about that. i would be curious about your process in thinking about that chapter as like a real moment where i think you reflecting on how not to just come up as nostalgic in a way that a historical about the positive parts of the internet and more generally how your views on the feminist like a reflection on the tech feminist stuff. >> absolutely. that was an intense moment and an eye-opening one whereas at that time i was based in new york and i remember as elements of harassment became unavoidable on platforms like twitter and

facebook, i found just like the professional feminist media at that time was not necessarily addressing some of the intersection elements that went into this harassment. some of the resources that i found that were partnered with things like the resources that just seemed so much beyond this, but this being of course like a media presentation of gender and equality. that period of time we can see coincided with the activism, too, certainly black lives

matter. i do remember especially at the women's march in 2016 having a feeling like, wow, we've really come so far about a lot of basic understandings of inclusion that would have been quite radical three years prior, or accepted much more broadly. i think i'm always hesitant to name certain factors more than others as to why that might be, but i do think as problematic as twitter is, as traumatic as these major platforms are, the nature of having something like twitter where you had trending topics and so it could create a hashtag and use that to discuss

personal experiences of oppression, and having that community element in a in a plm that's designed for multiple communities, they pushed forward some more progressive ideas. but but i said that with a lot f hesitation because for the most part i feel that those platforms that are designed for everyone are themselves very dangerous point this is one of those trade-offs, it's a trade-off that because you have a twitter account and you have many, many types of people, you probably follow a few people, colored people, trans people, with backgrounds very different from yours. seeing their differences, seeing their experiences and their arguments as part of the conversation in the part of

twitter that was having hashtag, would be the key, the key, one of the turning points for this hashtag activism, it is something that i don't want to discount but it don't want to credit too much. i don't want to discount twitter role but i don't want to credit twitter because twitter certainly did nothing for that as happen, twitter as a company did nothing for that user activism. >> that a belief like black women on twitter twitter and ts on twitter to use the platform for movements, organizing, like finding audiences doesn't necessarily represent a credit to twitter. it represents a credit to those folks. i think your point about the way in which those folks may choose to follow people who are not

like them or be engaged in different conversations was really interesting because one of the challenges of viewing yourself as a lurker is that you can gain the sort of false sense of familiarity with the things you experience you are looking just by the fact you never interact with them. i think that's one of the tricky bits about sorted using these online platforms as a way to understanding or relating to other folks experiences, is you can feel you are much more familiar with them and i think not the specific lots of black folks online have talked about how like they feel and are treated by like white listeners. i think the npr -- talked about how he feels complex white folks think he's everybody's like black friend. there's a way in which looking 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. the other reflection want to offer on that is that, one of the challenges we talked a little bit about, one at reasons that tech feminism was successful in putting out materials that people saw was they did need those materials to make money. it was sort of we can put this online for free. i do think one of the other challenges of looking is it can be easy, because, appropriate or sort of not necessarily credit peoples ideas if you're expensing them in this way that doesn't feel to you like it was like a this in a in the book. i just saw on twitter. there's sort of a weird flipside

to experiencing or inclusivity or understanding of the peoples experiences through just interacting with them from a distance. >> absolutely. i mean, the example that i think of, again going back to twitter, is we see plenty of the tweets from people at airports complaining about some service. we don't see tweets from airport workers because they would get fired. these platforms might appear to be a representation of public opinion, but it's always a very privileged public opinion or it's a public opinion that someone has taken certain risks to share. that's a key part of this in that, again with the traders can i feel with the hashtag activism a lot of people made the decision okay, , this will be a

little embarrassing but i have community here, i have a moment, i'm going to take advantage of it. it's always been the case with any kind of social media blogs, people with substantially less power, assistance, gate economy workers. how many times have you seen people complaint other lift drivers on twitter facebook? it's almost like the drivers dod not exist on twitter. i know that part of that is my filter bubble. and a part of that is because i am following a very filtered timeline, but i also know that the opportunity to share this experience from being some of his precarious, someone who is possibly not even breaking even if you are, lift driving is kind

of -- it's very much a last resort for people, and so that's one thing when, twitter is a a representation of real life but it's always a filtered, it is always what people of various degrees of harsher. another thing there are strategies that people can take to be porous enough to be open to the general public. in the book i talked to someone who is a moderator for sub reddit design for women in gaming. if you know anything about women in gaming that imagine reddit is not the friendliest place in the world to them. at the same time yet to understand they don't want to be so exclusive that some kid in a

small town who knows know what else with these interests in their town, can't use internet, like find their people, find the like-minded community. they want to be porous enough to be open to their people somewhere out in the world. but it also have a little bit of amazed to get through to get to the actual more intense conversation, conversations that still might not be completely unfiltered but are a little bit more loose and open than it would be on reddit. what they do is they submit a posting history to the moderator on reddit, and if you show you can posting consistently, show you are not there to troll, you'll get an invite to discord server. there's a little bit more of a deeper conversation, and then

again that's possibly imperfect. there might be trolls that are creating accounts, faking their which is to get access to the discords. it is filtered the community enough. it is a tactic, not a solution. >> thank you. you set me up perfectly for the last question. which is i think the extent your book has a thick wood message or hope for the future, it's about the power of the smoke unities like the ones that taught you, i don't think you are as -- you to use the phrase the magic of the unit because you're much better writer than i am, the magic of the internet, right? that something that's been coming up for a lot of folks especially more recently. i think about platforms like macedon.

do you have words of advice for folks are interested to looking to engage with smaller communities or imagining the internet like engaging with the internet as it was? >> absolutely. derek has a step-by-step guide called run your own social, and he shares 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 it's kind of hard to get everybody to just get off facebook and go to decentralized nonsocial network, the network effect of people having been on this platform, schools, workplaces, so many things. for some people who are quite privileged, they can go without having facebook account. other people are just kind of

kind of forced into participating. the social sacrifice of having to give up that the count is too great. but if you are in the place you tried to build a community online with people that you already know and you want just a step removed come good like to not have your data taken for profit and exploited and possibly leaked, or all of those challenging factors, surveillance, data breaches, all of that, like again, these are tactics, not necessary solutions but some of them, it's worth looking into. sometimes if you don't necessarily feel yet the technical ability even just using some commercial platforms that have elements a distance from the general feeds, i really

think that technique that the gaming community, she's studied moderation -- she's classical fort and this is one of those techniques that is very easy to implement because something that if i think is are interesting about the internet right now that might not been the case before is that everyone, if you are a user you're also a moderator moderator. you are also at some point in your life you're probably going to see a conflict and possibly want to step in, whether that's two neighbors have just got in a fight on -- what's that neighborhood at? next door, yeah. etc some people -- >> that was like a voice from next door. >> yes. that's basically like only

neighborhood stats, but it's the thing that is daily internet activity, you will possibly see people have complex, and perhaps you were in a place to help them disengage, to de-escalate the situation. that's part of having, one thing we didn't talk about quite as much is that shift from this ultra- exclusive internet that you had to have the resources to afford, to afford to login, to afford a computer. to this time now that a significant percentage of these countries, significant percentage of the world has used the internet and uses the internet regularly. so that sense of needing to share this internet, share the internet platform and space with many people are not like you, it

does mean conflict. it means if you're in a place to make it a little bit nicer, just do what you can. >> great. thank you so much for speaking about your book. thank you for writing it and you're going to be signing them i understand, copies are available for purchase over there. it's really a really beautifully written book so i can't recommend it highly enough. [applause] >> members of congress testified today before the house small business committee on the paycheck protection program and other measures intended to provide economic relief to small businesses impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. live coverage begins at 11 a.m. eastern on c-span2. >> next, a retired admiral james stavridis former supreme allied commande