Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle Reading App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Apple
Android
Windows Phone
Android
To get the free app, enter your email address or mobile phone number.
Best Books of the Year So Far
Looking for something great to read? Browse our editors' picks for 2015's Best Books of the Year So Far in fiction, nonfiction, mysteries, children's books, and much more.
$23.78
FREE Shipping on orders over $35.
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Gift-wrap available.
Frequently Bought Together
{"currencyCode":"USD","itemData":[{"priceBreaksMAP":null,"buyingPrice":23.78,"ASIN":"0805093567","moqNum":1,"isPreorder":0},{"priceBreaksMAP":null,"buyingPrice":11.6,"ASIN":"0143121235","moqNum":1,"isPreorder":0}],"shippingId":"0805093567::7Qi7r7mgX6K1zRfUCBchAFskPbGclWi61FjVdoJb90r5XXdRri1T2OCJigWq6yhkmy4kpe5tbk312tOl8sTmh44GUNIgvpIvzdmzYhiJ%2Bdg97EOdDYk1Mw%3D%3D,0143121235::C8oyZtUDXwpO%2B8%2Bjo4ETB3mZFqvJTAqJdrNVVvHY47nI3z86zeAdTTHB2ss4i%2BwBN0683vIC614pHhOnyY1bQDUJiA47qkrcc8xkv6lXN0zDhZqYqpESig%3D%3D","sprites":{"addToWishlist":["wl_one","wl_two","wl_three"],"addToCart":["s_addToCart","s_addBothToCart","s_add3ToCart"],"preorder":["s_preorderThis","s_preorderBoth","s_preorderAll3"]},"shippingDetails":{"xy":"same"},"tags":["x","y","z","w"],"strings":{"addToWishlist":["Add to Wish List","Add both to Wish List","Add all three to Wish List","Add all four to Wish List"],"addToCart":["Add to Cart","Add both to Cart","Add all three to Cart","Add all four to Cart"],"showDetailsDefault":"Show availability and shipping details","shippingError":"An error occurred, please try again","hideDetailsDefault":"Hide availability and shipping details","priceLabel":["Price:","Price for both:","Price for all three:","Price For All Four:"],"preorder":["Pre-order this item","Pre-order both items","Pre-order all three items","Pre-order all four items"]}}
This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.
Shop the New Digital Design Bookstore
Check out the Digital Design Bookstore, a new hub for photographers, art directors, illustrators, web developers, and other creative individuals to find highly rated and highly relevant career resources. Shop books on web development and graphic design, or check out blog posts by authors and thought-leaders in the design industry.
Shop now
There is no such thing as the public internet. Everything flows through private pipes. This statement appears in the conclusion of The People’s Platform, but frames Astra Taylor’s entire book. Her chapters descend a steep curve of hucksterism that has us all in its thrall.
It is rare that I get book this clear, this well thought out and this well organized. The People’s Platform condemns Web 2.0 for making everyone a serf in the billionaires’ playground. We create content, we upload everything in our lives, we list our friends and contacts for the social media sites to exploit, and we get nothing for it, at all. We do it for the “freedom” it gives us, for the creative license it gives us, for the feeling of community it gives us. The massive profits from it go entirely elsewhere. And those same corporations now dispense with our services for the freebies we give them.
The Internet is a funnel. We follow our friends, their comments and their likes and end up buying what they buy or recommend. Facebook even adds our photos to our likes, so friends will know immediately it’s us and it’s true. We populate whole websites with uploaded content for free, so that giant corporations can reap the benefits of either the content or the data about us and all the people we name. A prime example is book reviews, which have certain among us slavishly reading books and analyzing them for the benefit of the site’s sales. Writing critical reviews results in negative votes, which lower the reviewer’s rank, so the successful reviews tend be rather cheery. Taylor calls it digital feudalism, where users work the digital farm and owners reap the very real profits. “Online, originality doesn’t pay; aggregation does.”
Documentary filmmaker Taylor skewers the romanticism of utopian new net heralds. That the promise of an open, democratic internet has been subverted by corporate overlords, monopolistic titans, public relations shills, and destructive wasteful advertising interests. In the process, shredding journalism (to which Taylor repeatedly refers to now as "churnalism") and transforming the media realm into hamster wheel (my words here, not hers) where every click is measured and logged for the science of predictive marketing. Depressing, because she is correct here -- though I do believe it's not in complete entirety and that this state is due in large part to web users themselves, who are indeed attracted to this model. Saddening, because reading this confirmed my own evolving darkened view of the web, as once I had so much faith in the power of the networked web. Taylor chronicles the obscenity of pay-per-click, the wasted resources (in both money and carbon). Even noting the irony that it was government that created these modern marvels, only to witness now private corporate entities siphon all the goodness in erecting their media empires and their quest to swallow all. That this unethical conflict of interest and crass commercialism reigns in the online realm, where it be considered offensive anywhere else. In the meantime, she questions whether this is a good arrangement for creative workers, who now are relegated to compete in a winner-take-all lottery, with no security, and most not making even enough to live on. Here, it's personal for Taylor -- while she strives to adopt an objective mantle, her experiential background surfaces again and again.Read more ›
Comment
Was this review helpful to you?
Yes No
Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
“The People’s Platform” by Astra Taylor is a timely discussion about the Internet, media and artistry. Ms. Taylor is an accomplished documentary filmmaker, musician, writer and activist. This visionary, intelligent and passionate book explains why we must Occupy the cultural commons to secure a better future.
Ms. Taylor reminds us that the on-and offline worlds are deeply connected. Sharing her own struggles with us, Ms. Taylor explains how the work of cultural production remains labor intensive for most filmmakers, musicians and journalists. However, as the Internet forces prices down to zero due to the relative ease of copying and distributing content, the author contends that the ecosystem supporting cultural producers has been rapidly crumbling around us.
As corporations shed workers dedicated to important vocations such as investigative journalism, Ms. Taylor challenges the ludicrous idea that mass amateurism can substitute for the work of dedicated professionals. The rhetoric of end user empowerment masks a private agenda to profits from the public’s voluntary labors; while BP’s purchase of search terms related to the recent Gulf oil spill demonstrates how corporations use their power to control the message. Discussing the Internet’s rampant sexism, inequality and lack of diversity, Ms. Taylor convincingly argues that the Internet has reinforced the power structures of the real world – not empowered the weak.
One of the finest attributes of this book is how Ms. Taylor challenges the libertarianism of the technology industry. Ms. Taylor says that practically, the Net is not really an open platform.Read more ›
Comment
Was this review helpful to you?
Yes No
Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more
This item: The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age
![]({"http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41J%2BjLvhD9L._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg":[228,346],"http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41J%2BjLvhD9L._SX326_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg":[328,499]})
