Our Biggest Fight: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age

ISBN: 0593728513

Author: McCourt Jr., Frank H.

Condition: New

NATIONAL BESTSELLER The internet as we know it is broken. Heres how we can seize back control of our lives from the corporate algorithms and create a better internet-before its too late.In the spirit of Thomas Paines Revolution-era Common Sense, this manifesto challenges us to create new digital architectures to safeguard democracy.-Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Elon MuskIt was once a utopian dream. But todays internet, despite its conveniences and connectivity, is the primary cause of a pervasive unease that has taken hold in the U.S. and other democratic societies. Its why youth suicide rates are rising, why politics has become toxic, and why our most important institutions are faltering.Information is the lifeblood of any society, and our current system for distributing it is corrupted at its heart. Everything comes down to our ability to communicate openly and trustfully with each other. But, thanks to the dominant digital platforms and the ways they distort human behavior, we have lost that ability-while, at the same time, weve been robbed of the data that is rightfully ours.The roots of this crisis, argue Frank McCourt and Michael Casey, lie in the prevailing order of the internet. In plain but forceful language, the authors-a civic entrepreneur and an acclaimed journalist-show how a centralized system controlled by a small group of for-profit entities has set this catastrophe in motion and eroded our personhood.And then they describe a groundbreaking solution to reclaim it: rather than superficial, patchwork regulations, we must reimagine the very architecture of the internet. The resulting third-generation internet would replace the status quo with a new model marked by digital property rights, autonomy, and ownership.Inspired by historical calls to action like Thomas Paines Common Sense, Our Biggest Fight argues that we must act now to embed the core values of a free, democratic society in the internet of tomorrow. Do it right and we will finally, properly, unlock its immense potential.