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[...] Facebook is a carefully managed top-down system, not a robust public square. It mimics some of the patterns of conversation, but that's a surface trait. In reality, Facebook is a tangle of rules and procedures for sorting information, rules devised by the corporation for the ultimate benefit …

[...] The company's lead lawyer on this described bluntly the roughshod attitude of his colleagues: "Google's leadership doesn't care terribly much about precedent or law." In this case precedent was the centuries-old protections of intellectual property, and the consequences were a potential devas…

[...] Each pathbreaking innovation promises to liberate technology from the talons of the monopolists, to create a new network so democratic that it will transform human nature. Somehow, in each instance, humanity remains its familiar self. Instead of profound redistributions of power, the new netw…

[...] What we need to always remember is that we're not just merging with machines, but with the companies that run the machines. This book is about the ideas that fuel these companies--and the importance of resisting them.

Over the decades, the Internet revolutionized reading patterns. Instead of beginning with the home pages for Slate or the New York Times, a growing swath of readers now encounters articles through Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Apple. Sixty-two percent of Americans get their news through social…