The Filter Bubble

Introduction

1 “A squirrel dying”: David Kirkpatrick, The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), 296.

1 “thereafter our tools shape us”: Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994).

1 “Personalized search for everyone”: Google Blog, Dec. 4, 2009, accessed Dec. 19, 2010, http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-search-for-everyone.html.

2 Google would use fifty-seven signals: Author interview with confidential source.

6 Wall Street Journal study: Julia Angwin, “The Web’s New Gold Mine: Your Secrets,” Wall Street Journal, July 30, 2010, accessed Dec. 19, 2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703940904575395073512989404.html.

6 “Yahoo”: Although the official trademark is Yahoo!, I’ve omitted the exclamation point throughout this book for easier reading.

6 site installs 223 tracking cookies: Angwin, “The World’s New Gold Mine,” July 30, 2010.

6 Teflon-coated pots: At the time of writing, ABC News used a piece of sharing software called “AddThis.” When you use AddThis to share a piece of content on ABC News’s site (or anyone else’s), AddThis places a tracking cookie on your computer that can be used to target advertising to people who share items from particular sites.

6 “the cost is information about you”: Chris Palmer, phone interview with author, Dec 10, 2010.

7 accumulated an average of 1,500 pieces of data: Stephanie Clifford, “Ads Follow Web Users, and Get More Personal,” New York Times, July 30, 2009, accessed Dec. 19, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/business/media/31privacy.html.

7 96 percent of Americans: Richard Behar, “Never Heard of Acxiom? Chances Are It’s Heard of You.” Fortune, Feb. 23, 2004, accessed Dec. 19, 2010, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/02/23/362182/index.htm.

8 Netflix can predict: Marshall Kirkpatrick, “They Did It! One Team Reports Success in the $1m Netflix Prize,” ReadWriteWeb, June 26, 2009, accessed Dec. 19, 2010, www.readwriteweb.com/archives/they_did_it_one_team_reports_success_in_the_1m_net.php.

8 Web site that isn’t customized… will seem quaint: Marshall Kirpatrick, “Facebook Exec: All Media Will Be Personalized in 3 to 5 Years,” ReadWriteWeb, Sept. 29, 2010, accessed Jan. 30, 2011, www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_exec_all_media_will_be_personalized_in_3.php.

8 “now the web is about ‘me’”: Josh Catone, “Yahoo: The Web’s Future Is Not in Search,” ReadWriteWeb, June 4, 2007, accessed Dec. 19, 2010, www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_personalization.php.

8 “tell them what they should be doing”: James Farrar, “Google to End Serendipity (by Creating It),” ZDNet, Aug. 17, 2010, accessed Dec. 19, 2010, www.zdnet.com/blog/sustainability/google-to-end-serendipity-by-creating-it/1304.

8 are becoming a primary news source: Pew Research Center, “Americans Spend More Time Following the News,” Sept. 12, 2010, accessed Feb 7, 2011, http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=1793.

8 million more people joining each day: Justin Smith, “Facebook Now Growing by Over 700,000 Users a Day, and New Engagement Stats,” July 2, 2009, accessed Feb. 7, 2011, www.insidefacebook.com/2009/07/02/facebook-now-growing-by-over-700000-users-a-day-updated-engagement-stats/.

8 biggest source of news in the world: Ellen McGirt, “Hacker. Drop out. CEO,” Fast Company, May 1, 2007, accessed Feb. 7, 2011, www.fastcompany.com/magazine/115/open_features-hacker-dropout-ceo.html.

11 information: 900,000 blog posts, 50 million tweets: “Measuring tweets,” Twitter blog, Feb. 22, 2010, accessed Dec. 19, 2010, http://blog.twitter.com/2010/02/measuring-tweets.html.

11 60 million Facebook status updates, and 210 billion e-mails: “A Day in the Internet,” Online Education, accessed Dec. 19, 2010, www.onlineeducation.net/internet.

11 about 5 billion gigabytes: M. G. Siegler, “Eric Schmidt: Every 2 Days We Create as Much Information as We Did up to 2003,” TechCrunch blog, Aug. 4, 2010, accessed Dec. 19, 2010, http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/04/schmidt-data.

11 two new stadium-size complexes: Paul Foy, “Gov’t Whittles Bidders for NSA’s Utah Data Center,” Associated Press, Apr. 21, 2010, accessed Dec. 19, 2010, http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=10438827&page=2.

11 new units of measurements: James Bamford, “Who’s in Big Brother’s Database?,” The New York Review of Books, Nov 5, 2009, accessed Feb. 8, 2011, www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/nov/o5/whos-in-big-brothers-database.

11 the attention crash: Steve Rubel, “Three Ways to Mitigate the Attention Crash, Yet Still Feel Informed,” Micro Persuasion (Steve Rubel’s blog), Apr. 30, 2008, accessed Dec. 19, 2010, www.micropersuasion.com/2008/04/three-ways-to-m.html.

13 “back in the bottle”: Danny Sullivan, phone interview with author, Sept 10, 2010.

13 part of our daily experience: Cass Sunstein, Republic.com 2.0. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).

13–14 “skew your perception of the world”: Ryan Calo, phone interview with author, Dec. 13, 2010.

14 “the psychological equivalent of obesity”: danah boyd, “Streams of Content, Limited Attention: The Flow of Information through Social Media,” speech, Web 2.0 Expo. (New York: 2009), accessed July 19, 2010, www.danah.org/papers/talks/Web2Expo.html.

15 “strategically time” their online solicitations: “Ovulation Hormones Make Women ‘Choose Clingy Clothes,’” BBC News, Aug. 5, 2010, accessed Feb: 8, 2011, www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10878750.

16 third-party marketing firms: “Preliminary FTC Staff Privacy Report,” remarks of Chairman Jon Leibowitz, as prepared for delivery, Dec. 1, 2010, accessed Feb. 8, 2011, www.ftc.gov/speeches/leibowitz/101201privacyreportremarks.pdf.

16 Yochai Bentler argues: Yochai Benkler, “Siren Songs and Amish Children: Autonomy, Information, and Law,” New York University Law Review, Apr. 2001.

17 tap into lots of different networks: Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000).

17 “make us all next door neighbors”: Thomas Friedman, “It’s a Flat World, After All,” New York Times, Apr. 3, 2005, accessed Dec. 19, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/magazine/03DOMINANCE.html?pagewanted=all.

17 “smaller and smaller and faster and faster”: Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Random House, 2000), 141.

18 “closes the loop on pecuniary self-interest”: Clive Thompson, interview with author, Brooklyn, NY, Aug. 13, 2010.

18 “Customers are always right, but people aren’t”: Lee Siegel, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob (New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2008), 161.

18 thirty-six hours a week watching TV: “Americans Using TV and Internet Together 35% More Than A Year Ago,” Nielsen Wire, Mar. 22, 2010, accessed Dec. 19, 2010, http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/three-screen-report-q409.

19 “civilization of Mind in cyberspace”: John Perry Barlow, “A Cyberspace Independence Declaration,” Feb. 9, 1996, accessed Dec. 19, 2010, http://w2.eff.org/Censorship/Internet_censorship_bills/barlow_0296.declaration.

19 “code is law”: Lawrence Lessig, Code 2.0 (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 5.

Chapter One: The Race for Relevance

21 “If you’re not paying for something”: MetaFilter blog, accessed Dec. 10, 2010, www.metafilter.com/95152/Userdriven-discontent.

22 “vary sex, violence, and political leaning”: Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (New York: Knopf, 1995), 46.

22 “the Daily Me”: Ibid., 151.

22 “Intelligent agents are the unequivocal future”: Negroponte, Mar. 1, 1995, e-mail to the editor, Wired.com, Mar. 3, 1995, www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.03/negroponte.html.

23 “The agent question looms”: Jaron Lanier, “Agents of Alienation,” accessed Jan. 30, 2011, www.jaronlanier.com/agentalien.html

24 twenty-five worst tech products: Dan Tynan, “The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time,” PC World, May 26, 2006, accessed Dec. 10, 2010, www.pcworld.com/article/125772-3/the_25_worst_tech_products_of_all_time.html#bob.

24 invested over $100 million: Dawn Kawamoto, “Newsmaker: Riding the next technology wave,” CNET News, Oct. 2, 2003, accessed Jan. 30, 2011, http://news.cnet.com/2008-7351-5085423.html.

25 “he’s a lot like John Irving”: Robert Spector, Get Big Fast (New York: HarperBusiness, 2000), 142.

25 “small Artificial Intelligence company”: Ibid., 145.

26 surprised to find them at the top: Ibid., 27.

26 Random House, controlled only 10 percent: Ibid., 25.

26 so many of them—3 million active titles: Ibid., 25.

27 They called their field “cybernetics”: Barnabas D. Johnson, “Cybernetics of Society,” The Jurlandia Institute, accessed Jan. 30, 2011, www.jurlandia.org/cybsoc.htm.

27 PARC was known for: Michael Singer, “Google Gobbles Up Outride,” InternetNews.com, Sept. 21, 2001, accessed Dec. 10, 2010, www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/889381/Google-Gobbles-Up-Outride.html.

27 collaborative filtering: Moya K. Mason, “Short History of Collaborative Filtering,” accessed Dec. 10, 2010, www.moyak.com/papers/collaborative-filtering.html.

28 “handle any incoming stream of electronic documents”: David Goldberg, David Nichols, Brian M. Oki, and Douglas Terry, “Using Collaborative Filtering to Weave an Information Tapestry,” Communications of the ACM 35 (1992), 12:61.

28 “sends replies as necessary”: Upendra Shardanand, “Social Information Filtering for Music Recommendation” (graduate diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1994).

29 fewer health books: Martin Kaste, “Is Your E-Book Reading Up On You?,” NPR.org, Dec. 15, 2010, accessed Feb. 8, 2010, www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132058735/is-your-e-book-reading-up-on-you.

30 as if by an “objective” recommendation: Aaron Shepard, Aiming at Amazon: The NEW Business of Self Publishing, Or How to Publish Your Books with Print on Demand and Online Book Marketing (Friday Harbor, WA: Shepard Publications, 2006), 127.

30 “notion of ‘relevant’”: Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” Section 1.3.1.

31 “advertising causes enough mixed incentives”: Ibid., Section 8, Appendix A.

32 “very difficult to get this data”: Ibid., Section 1.3.2.

33 black-ops kind of feel: Saul Hansell, “Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine,” New York Times, June 3, 2007, accessed Feb. 7, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/business/yourmoney/03google.html?_r=1.

33 “give back exactly what you want”: David A. Vise and Mark Malseed, The Google Story (New York: Bantam Dell, 2005), 289.

34 “ancient shark teeth”: Patent full text, accessed Dec. 10, 2010, http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=7,451,130.PN.&OS=pn/7,451,130&RS=PN/7,451,13.

35 “could call that artificial intelligence”: Lawrence Page, Google Zeitgeist Europe Conference, May 2006.

35 “answer a more hypothetical question”: BBC News, “Hyper-personal Search ‘Possible,’” June 20, 2007, accessed Dec. 10, 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6221256.stm.

36 “We’re a utility”: David Kirkpatrick, “Facebook Effect,” New York Times, June 8, 2010, accessed Dec. 10, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/books/excerpt-facebook-effect.html?pagewanted=1.

37 “more news in a single day”: Ellen McGirt, “Hacker. Dropout. CEO,” Fast Company, May 1, 2007, accessed Feb. 7, 2011, http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/115/open_features-hacker-dropout-ceo.html.

37 it rests on three factors: Jason Kincaid, “EdgeRank: The Secret Sauce That Makes Facebook’s News Feed Tick,” TechCrunch blog, Apr. 22, 2010, accessed Dec. 10, 2010, http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/22/facebook-edgerank.

38 the 300 million user mark: Mark Zuckerberg, “300 Million and On,” Facebook blog, Sept. 15, 2009, accessed Dec. 10, 2010, http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=136782277130.

38 the Washington Post homepage: Full disclosure: In the spring of 2010, I briefly consulted with the Post about its online communities and Web presence.

39 “the most transformative thing”: Caroline McCarthy, “Facebook F8: One Graph to Rule Them All,” CNET News, Apr. 21, 2010, accessed Dec. 10, 2010, http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20003053-36.html.

39 sharing 25 billion items a month: M. G. Siegler, “Facebook: We’ll Serve 1 Billion Likes on the Web in Just 24 Hours,” TechCrunch blog, Apr. 21, 2010, accessed Dec. 10, 2010, http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/21/facebook-like-button.

42 Acxiom knew more: Richard Behar, “Never Heard of Acxiom? Chances Are It’s Heard of You,” Fortune, Feb. 23, 2004, accessed Dec. 10, 2010, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/02/23/362182/index.htm.

43 serves most of the largest companies in America: nternetNews.com Staff, “Acxiom Hacked, Customer Information Exposed,” InternetNews .com, Aug. 8, 2003, accessed Dec. 10, 2010, www.esecurityplanet.com/trends/article.php/2246461/Acxiom-Hacked-Customer-Information-Exposed.htm.

43 “product we make is data”: Behar, “Never Heard of Acxiom?”

44 auctions it off to the company with the highest bid: Stephanie Clifford, “Your Online Clicks Have Value, for Someone Who Has Something to Sell,” New York Times, Mar. 25, 2009, accessed Dec. 10, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/business/media/26adco.html?_r=2.

44 takes under a second: The Center for Digital Democracy, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and the World Privacy Forum’s complaint to the Federal Trade Commission, Apr. 8, 2010, accessed Dec. 10, 2010, http://democraticmedia.org/real-time-targeting.

44 leave without buying anything: Press release, FetchBack Inc., Apr. 13, 2010, accessed Dec. 10, 2010, www.fetchback.com/press_041310.html.

45 “62 billion real-time attributes a year”: Center for Digital Democracy, U.S. PIRG, and the World Privacy Forum’s complaint.

45 the Rubicon Project: Ibid.

Chapter Two: The User Is the Content

47 “undermines the democratic way of life”: John Dewey, Essays, Reviews, and Miscellany, 1939–1941, The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925–1953, vol.14 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998), 227.

47 “been tailored for them”: Holman W. Jenkins Jr., “Google and the Search for the Future,” Wall Street Journal, Aug. 14, 2010, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704901104575423294099527212.html.

48 “don’t know which half”: John Wanamaker, U.S. department store merchant, as quoted in Marilyn Ross and Sue Collier, The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing (Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 2010), 344.

49 One executive in the marketing session: I wasn’t able to identify him in my notes.

49 Now, in 2010, they only received: Interactive Advertising Bureau PowerPoint, report, “Brand Advertising Online and The Next Wave of M&A,” Feb. 2010.

50 target premium audiences in “other, cheaper places”: Ibid. 50 “denied an assured access to the facts”: Walter Lippmann, Liberty and the News (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1920), 6.

50 blogs remain incredibly reliant on them: Pew Research Center, “How Blogs and Social Media Agendas Relate and Differ from the Traditional Press,” May 23, 2010, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, www.journalism.org/node/20621.

52–53 “these documents are forgeries”: Peter Wallsten, “‘Buckhead,’ Who Said CBS Memos Were Forged, Is a GOP-Linked Attorney,” Los Angeles Times, Sept. 18, 2004, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002039080_buckhead18.html.

53 “We should not have used them”: Associated Press, “CBS News Admits Bush Documents Can’t Be Verified,” Sept. 21, 2004, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6055248/ns/politics.

54 paying attention to the story: The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 2004 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), http://books.google.com/books?id=uqqp-sDCjo4C&pg=PA392&lpg=PA392&dq=public+opinion+poll+on+dan+rather+controversy&source=bl&ots=CPGu03cpsn&sig=9XT-li8ar2GOXxfVQWCcGNHIxTg&hl=en&ei=uw_7TLK9OMGB8gb3r72ACw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=public%20opinion%20poll%20on%20dan%20rather%20controversy&f=true.

54 “a crisis in journalism”: Lippmann, Liberty and the News, 64.

56 at this point that newspapers came to carry: This section was informed by the wonderful Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978).

57 “They goose-stepped it”: Lippmann, Liberty and the News, 4.

57 “what [the average citizen] shall know”: Ibid., 7.

58 “distinctive member of a community”: John Dewey, Essays, Reviews, and Miscellany, 1939–1941, The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925–1953, vol. 2 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984), 332.

59 calls the 2000s the disintermediation decade: Jon Pareles, “A World of Megabeats and Megabytes,” New York Times, Dec. 30, 2009, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/arts/music/03tech.html.

59 Disintermediation—the elimination of middlemen: Dave Winer, Dec. 7, 2005, Dave Winer’s blog, Scripting News, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, http://scripting.com/2005/12/07.html#.

59 “It sucks power out of the center”: Esther Dyson, “Does Google Violate Its ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Motto?,” Intelligence Squared US. Debate between Esther Dyson, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Harry Lewis, Randal C. Picker, Jim Harper, and Jeff Jarvis (New York, NY) Nov. 18, 2008, accessed Feb. 7, 2011, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97216369.

60 the Latin for “middle layer”: Hat tip to Clay Shirky for introducing me to this fact in his conversation with Jay Rosen. Clay Shirky interview by Jay Rosen, video, chap. 5 “Why Study Media?” NYU Primary Sources (New York, NY), 2011, accessed Feb 9, 2011, http://nyuprimarysources.org/video-library/jay-rosen-and-clay-shirky/.

61 “many wresting power from the few”: Lev Grossman, “Time’s Person of the Year: You,” Time, Dec. 13, 2006, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html.

61 “did not eliminate intermediaries”: Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 70.

62 “It will remember what you know”: Danny Sullivan, “Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Newspapers & Journalism,” Search Engine Land, Oct. 3, 2009, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, http://searchengineland.com/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-on-newspapers-journalism-27172.

62 “bringing the content to the right group”: “Krishna Bharat Discusses the Past and Future of Google News,” Google News blog, June 15, 2010, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/krishna-bharat-discusses-past-and.html.

62 “We pay attention”: Ibid.

63 “most important, their social circle”: Ibid.

63 “make it available to publishers”: Ibid.

63 Americans lost more faith in news: “Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two Decade Low; Public Evaluations of the News Media: 1985–2009,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Sept. 13, 2009, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, http://people-press.org/report/543/.

64 “New York Times and some random blogger”: Author’s interview with Yahoo News executive. Sept. 22, 2010. This interview was conducted in confidence.

65 unplugging from cable TV offerings: Erick Schonfeld, “Estimate: 800,000 U.S. Households Abandoned Their TVs for the Web,” TechCrunch blog, Apr. 13, 2010, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/13/800000-households-abandoned-tvs-web; “Cable TV Taking It on the Chin,” www.freemoneyfinance.com/2010/11/cable-tv-taking-it-on-the-chin.html; and Peter Svensson, “Cable Subscribers Flee, but Is Internet to Blame?” http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Cable-subscribers-flee-but-is-apf-3875814716.html?x=0.

65 “change the ad industry forever”: “Google Vice President: Online Video and TV Will Converge,” June 25, 2010, Appmarket.tv, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, www.appmarket.tv/news/160-breaking-news/440-google-vice-president-online-video-and-tv-will-converge.html.

66 know people who live near us: Bill Bishop, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008), 35.

67 “watch television to turn your brain off”: Jason Snell, “Steve Jobs on the Mac’s 20th Anniversary,” Macworld, Feb. 2, 2004, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, www.macworld.com/article/29181/2004/02/themacturns20jobs.html.

67 thirty-six hours a week: “Americans Using TV and Internet Together 35% More Than a Year Ago,” nielsenwire, Mar. 22, 2010, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/three-screen-report-q409.

68 quit channel surfing far more quickly: Paul Klein, as quoted in Marcus Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 39.

68 like your own personal TV channel: “YouTube Leanback Offers Effortless Viewing,” YouTube blog, July 7, 2010, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010/07/youtube-leanback-offers-effortless.html.

69 onto the Big Board, and you’re liable to get a raise: Ben McGrath, “Search and Destroy: Nick Denton’s Blog Empire,” New Yorker, Oct. 18, 2010, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/18/101018fa_fact_mcgrath?currentPage=all.

70 “come to us for our judgment”: Jeremy Peters, “Some Newspapers, Tracking Readers Online, Shift Coverage,” New York Times, Sept. 5, 2010, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/business/media/06track.html.

71 gin up stories that will get clicks: Danna Harman, “In Chile, Instant Web Feedback Creates the Next Day’s Paper,” Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 1, 2004, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, www.csmonitor.com/2004/1201/p01s04-woam.html.

71 “creating content in response to audience insight”: Jeremy Peters, “At Yahoo, Using Searches to Steer News Coverage,” New York Times, July 5, 2010, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/business/media/05yahoo.html.

72 the newspaper’s most e-mailed stories: Jonah A. Berger and Katherine L. Milkman, “Social Transmission and Viral Culture,” Social Science Research Network Working Paper Series (Dec. 25, 2009): 2.

72 “Woman in Sumo Wrestler Suit”: Huffington Post, “The Craziest Headline Ever,” June 23, 2010, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/23/craziest-bar-ever-discove_n_623447.html.

72 sex with a horse: Danny Westneat, “Horse Sex Story Was Online Hit,” Seattle Times, Dec. 30, 2005, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002711400_danny30.html.

72 world’s ugliest dog: Ben Margot, “Rescued Chihuahua Princess Abby Wins World’s Ugliest Dog Contest, Besting Boxer Mix Pabst,” Los Angeles Times, June 27, 2010, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleashed/2010/06/rescued-chihuahua-princess-abby-wins-worlds-ugliest-dog-contest-besting-boxer-mix-pabst.html.

72 “everyone sees the same thing”: Carl Bialik, “Look at This Article. It’s One of Our Most Popular,” Wall Street Journal, May 20, 2009.

73 “little need to share marketing information”: Andrew Alexander, “Making the Online Customer King at The Post,” Washington Post, July 11, 2010, accessed Dec. 11, 2010, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/09/AR2010070903802.html.

73 “whether you want to hear this or not”: Nicholas Negroponte, interview with author, Truckee, CA, Aug. 5, 2010.

73 “Gawker’s Big Board is a scary extreme”: Professor Michael Schudson, interview with author, New York, NY, Aug. 13, 2010.

73 stories about the war in Afghanistan: Simon Dumenco, “Google News Cares More About Facebook, Twitter and Apple Than Iraq, Afghanistan,” Advertising Age, June 23, 2010, accessed Feb. 9, 2011, http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=144624.

74 “not to pursue some important stories”: Alexander, “Making the Online Customer King.”

75 “periodically be alarmed when there is a crisis?”: Shirky, interviewed by Jay Rosen.

75 “consequences of conjoint and interacting behavior”: John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (Athens, OH: Swallow Press, 1927), 126.

Chapter Three: The Adderall Society

77 “contact with persons dissimilar to themselves”: John Stuart Mill, The Principles of Political Economy (Amherst, MA: Prometheus Books, 2004), 543.

77 “reminds one more of a sleepwalker’s”: Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe (New York: Penguin, 1964), 11.

78 “but I don’t want to talk here”: Henry Precht, interview with Ambassador David E. Mark, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, July 28, 1989, accessed Dec. 14, 2010, http://memory.loc.gov/service/mss/mssmisc/mfdip/2005%20txt%20files/2004mar02.txt.

78 the two men planned a meeting: Ibid.

78 “all I want is my money”: Ibid.

78 “I was snookered”: John Limond Hart, The CIA’s Russians (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2003), 132.

78 defect and resettle in the United States: Ibid., 135.

79 James Jesus Angleton… was skeptical: Ibid., 140.

79 CIA’s documents indicated otherwise: “Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko, a Soviet defector, Died on August 23rd, Aged 80,” Economist, Sept. 4, 2008, accessed Dec. 14, 2010, www.economist.com/node/12051491.

79 subjected to polygraph tests: Ibid.

80 sent to the Russian front as punishment: Richards J. Heuer Jr., “Nosenko: Five Paths to Judgment,” Studies in Intelligence 31, no. 3 (Fall 1987).

80 set him up in a new identity: David Stout, “Yuri Nosenko, Soviet Spy Who Defected, Dies at 81,” New York Times, Aug. 27, 2008, accessed Dec. 14, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2008/08/28/us/28nosenko.html?scp=1&sq=nosenko&st=cse.

80 news of his death was relayed: Ibid.

81 full of laudatory comments: Richards J. Heuer Jr., Psychology of Intelligence Analysis (Alexandria, VA: Central Intelligence Agency, 1999).

81 “analysts should be self-conscious”: Ibid., xiii.

82 secondhand and in a distorted form: Ibid., xx–xxi.

82 “To achieve the clearest possible image”: Ibid., xxi–xxii.

83 “predictably irrational”: Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (New York: HarperCollins, 2008)

83 figuring out what makes us happy: Dan Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness (New York: Knopf, 2006).

83 only one part of the story: Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error (New York: HarperCollins, 2010).

84 “Information wants to be reduced”: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (New York: Random House, 2007), 64.

85 quickly converted into schemata: Doris Graber, Processing the News: How People Tame the Information Tide (New York: Longman, 1988).

85 “condensation of all features of a story”: Ibid., 161.

85 woman celebrating her birthday: Steven James Breckler, James M. Olson, and Elizabeth Corinne Wiggins, Social Psychology Alive (Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006), 69.

86 added details to their memories: Graber, Processing the News, 170.

86 Princeton versus Dartmouth: A. H. Hastorf and H. Cantril, “They Saw a Game: A Case Study,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 49: 129–34.

87 experts’ predictions weren’t even close: Philip E. Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).

88 a process of assimilation and accommodation: Jean Piaget, The Psychology of Intelligence (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950).

89 the idea that Obama was a Muslim: Jonathan Chait, “How Republicans Learn That Obama Is Muslim, New Republic, Aug. 27, 2010, www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/77260/how-republicans-learn-obama-muslim.

89 “actually become mis-educated”: Ibid.

89 two modified versions of “The Country Doctor”: Travis Proulx and Steven J. Heine, “Connections from Kafka: Exposure to Meaning Threats Improves Implicit Learning of an Artificial Grammar,” Psychological Science 20, no. 9 (2009): 1125–31.

90 “A severe snowstorm filled the space”: Franz Kafka, A Country Doctor (Prague: Twisted Spoon Press, 1997).

90 “Once one responds to a false alarm”: Ibid.

90 “strived to make sense”: Proulx and Heine, “Connections from Kafka.”

91 presented with an “information gap”: George Loewenstein, “The Psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation,” Psychological Bulletin 116, no. 1 (1994): 75–98, https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/gl20/GeorgeLoewenstein/Papers_files/pdf/PsychofCuriosity.pdf.

91 “shields the searcher from such radical encounters”: Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011), 182.

91 “only give you answers”: Pablo Picasso, as quoted in Gerd Leonhard, Media Futurist Web site, Dec. 8, 2004, accessed Feb. 9, 2011, www.mediafuturist.com/about.html.

92 “On Adderall, I was able to work”: Joshua Foer, “The Adderall Me: My Romance with ADHD Meds,” Slate, May 10, 2005, www.slate.com/id/2118315.

92 “pressures [to use enhancing drugs] are only going to grow”: Margaret Talbot, “Brain Gain: The Underground World of ‘Neuroenhancing Drugs,’” New Yorker, Apr. 27, 2009, accessed Dec. 14, 2010, www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/04/27/090427fa_fact_talbot?currentPage=all.

93 “I think ‘inside the box’”: Erowid Experience Vaults, accessed Dec. 14, 2010, www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=56716.

93 “a generation of very focused accountants”: Talbot, “Brain Gain.”

94 “an analogy no one has ever seen”: Arthur Koestler, Art of Creation (New York: Arkana, 1989), 82.

94 “uncovers, selects, re-shuffles, combines, synthesizes”: Ibid., 86.

95 the key to creative thought: Hans Eysenck, Genius: The Natural History of Creativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

95 box represents the solution horizon: Hans Eysenck, “Creativity and Personality: Suggestions for a Theory,” Psychological Inquiry, 4, no. 3 (1993): 147–78.

97 no idea what they’re looking for: Aharon Kantorovich and Yuval Ne’eman, “Serendipity as a Source of Evolutionary Progress in Science,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part A, 20, no. 4: 505–29.

98 attach the candle to the wall: Karl Duncker, “On Problem Solving,” Psychological Monographs, 58 (1945).

98 reluctance to “break perceptual set”: George Katona, Organizing and Memorizing (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940).

99 creative people tend to see things: Arthur Cropley, Creativity in Education and Learning (New York: Longmans, 1967).

99 “sorted a total of 40 objects”: N. J. C. Andreases and Pauline S. Powers, “Overinclusive Thinking in Mania and Schizophrenia,” British Journal of Psychology 125 (1974): 452–56.

99 a “thing with weight”: Cropley, Creativity, 39.

100 “Stop counting—there are 43 pictures”: Richard Wiseman, The Luck Factor (New York: Hyperion, 2003), 43–44.

101 bilinguists are more creative than monolinguists: Charlan Nemeth and Julianne Kwan, “Minority Influence, Divergent Thinking and Detection of Correct Solutions,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 17, I. 9 (1987): 1, accessed Feb. 7, 2011, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1987.tb00339.x/abstract.

101 foreign ideas help us: W. M. Maddux, A. K. Leung, C. Chiu, and A. Galinsky, “Toward a More Complete Understanding of the Link Between Multicultural Experience and Creativity,” American Psychologist 64 (2009): 156–58.

102 illustrates how creativity arises: Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation (New York: Penguin, 2010), ePub Bud, accessed Feb 7, 2011, www.epubbud.com/read.php?g=LN9DVC8S.

102 “wide and diverse sample of spare parts”: Ibid., 6.

102 “environments that are powerfully suited”: Ibid., 3.

102 “ ‘serendipity’ article in Wikipedia”: Ibid., 13.

103 “shift from exploration and discovery”: John Battelle, The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture (New York: Penguin, 2005), 61.

103 “database of intentions”: Ibid.

104 “We need help overcoming rationality”: David Gelernter, Time to Start Taking the Internet Seriously, accessed Dec. 14, 2010, www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gelernter10/gelernter10_index.html.

105 “a vast island called California”: Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo, The Exploits of Esplandian (Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 2003).

Chapter Four: The You Loop

109 “what a personal computer really is”: Sharon Gaudin, “Total Recall: Storing Every Life Memory in a Surrogate Brain,” ComputerWorld, Aug. 2, 2008, accessed Dec. 15, 2010, www.computerworld.com/s/article/9074439/Total_Recall_Storing_every_life_memory_in_a_surrogate_brain.

109 “You have one identity”: David Kirkpatrick, The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), 199.

109 “I behave a different way”: “Live-Blog: Zuckerberg and David Kirkpatrick on the Facebook Effect,” transcript of interview, Social Beat, accessed Dec. 15, 2010, http://venturebeat.com/2010/07/21/live-blog-zuckerberg-and-david-kirkpatrick-on-the-facebook-effect.

110 “Same awkward self”: Ibid.

110 that would be the norm: Marshall Kirkpatrick, “Facebook Exec: All Media Will Be Personalized in 3 to 5 Years,” ReadWriteWeb, Sept. 29, 2010, accessed Dec. 15, 2010, www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_exec_all_media_will_be_personalized_in_3.php.

110 “a world that all may enter”: John Perry Barlow, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Feb. 8, 1996, accessed Dec. 15, 2010, https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html.

111 pseudonym with the real name: Julia Angwin and Steve Stecklow, “‘Scrapers’ Dig Deep for Data on Web,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 12, 2010, accessed Dec. 15, 2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703358504575544381288117888.html.

111 tied to the individual people who use them: Julia Angwin and Jennifer Valentino-Devries, “Race Is On to ‘Fingerprint’ Phones, PCs,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 30, 2010, accessed Jan. 30, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704679204575646704100959546.html?mod=ITP_pageone_0.

112 information sources make us freer: Yochai Benkler, “Of Sirens and Amish Children: Autonomy, Information, and Law,” New York University Law Review, 76 no. 23 (April 2001): 110.

115 “more than the bits of data”: Daniel Solove, The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 45.

116 how someone behaves from who she is: E. E. Jones and V.A. Harris, “The Attribution of Attitudes,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 3 (1967): 1–24.

116 electrocute other subjects: Stanley Milgram, “Behavioral Study of Obedience,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67 (1963): 371–78.

116 The plasticity of the self: Paul Bloom, “First Person Plural,” Atlantic (Nov. 2008), accessed Dec. 15, 2010, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/first-person-plural/7055.

117 aspirations played against their current desires: Katherine L. Milkman, Todd Rogers, and Max H. Bazerman, “Highbrow Films Gather Dust: Time-Inconsistent Preferences and Online DVD Rentals,” Management Science 55, no. 6 (June 2009): 1047–59, accessed Jan. 29, 2011, http://opimweb.wharton.upenn.edu/documents/research/Highbrow.pdf.

117 “want” movies like Sleepless in Seattle: Milkman, et al., “Highbrow Films Gather Dust.”

118 “nuances of what it means to be human”: John Battelle, phone interview with author, Oct. 12, 2010.

118 Google is working on it: Jonathan McPhie, phone interview with author, Oct. 13, 2010.

119 the “toxic knowledge” that might result: Mark Rothstein, as quoted in Cynthia L. Hackerott, J.D., and Martha Pedrick, J.D., “Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act Is a First Step; Won’t Solve the Problem,” Oct. 1, 2007, accessed Feb. 9, www.metrocorpcounsel.com/current.php?artType=view&artMonth=January&artYear=2011&EntryNo=7293.

119 “The digital ghost of Jay Gatz”: Siva Vaidyanathan, “Naked in the ‘Nonopticon,’” Chronicle Review 54, no. 23: B7.

120 “high cognition” arguments: Dean Eckles, phone interview with author, Nov. 9, 2010.

120 increase the effectiveness of marketing: Ibid.

122 pitches framed as sweepstakes: PK List Marketing, “Free to Me—Impulse Buyers,” accessed Jan. 28, 2011, www.pklistmarketing.com/Data%20Cards/Opportunity%20Seekers%20&%20Sweepstakes%20Participants/Cards/Free%20To%20Me%20-%20Impulse%20Buyers.htm.

123 “smartphone to be doing searches constantly”: Robert Andrews, “Google’s Schmidt: Autonomous, Fast Search Is ‘Our New Definition,’” paidContent, Sept. 7, 2010, accessed Dec. 15, 2010, http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-googles-schmidt-autonomous-fast-search-is-our-new-definition.

124 “ ‘Not-So-Minimal’ Consequences of Television News”: Shanto Iyengar, Mark D. Peters, and Donald R. Kinder, “Experimental Demonstrations of the ‘Not-So-Minimal’ Consequences of Television News Programs,” American Political Science Review 76, no. 4 (1982): 848–58.

124 “believe that defense or pollution”: Ibid.

124 strength of this priming effect: Drew Westen, The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation (Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2007).

125 study by Hasher and Goldstein: Lynn Hasher and David Goldstein, “Frequency and the Conference of Referential Validity,” Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour 16 (1977): 107–12.

126 “surrounded by downward-sloping land”: Matt Cohler, phone interview with author, Nov. 23, 2010.

128 results had been randomly redistributed: Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, “Teachers’ Expectancies: Determinants of Pupils’ IQ Gains,” Psychological Reports, 19 (1966): 115–18.

129 “network-based categorizations”: Dalton Conley, Elsewhere, U.S.A.: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms, and Economic Anxiety (New York: Pantheon, 2008), 164.

130 “Model-T version of what’s possible”: Geoff Duncan, “Netflix Offers $1Mln for Good Movie Picks,” Digital Trends, Oct. 2, 2006, accessed Dec. 15, 2010, www.digitaltrends.com/computing/netflix-offers-1-mln-for-good-movie-picks.

130 “a PC and some great insight”: Katie Hafner, “And If You Liked the Movie, a Netflix Contest May Reward You Handsomely,” New York Times, Oct. 2, 2006, accessed Dec. 15, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/technology/02netflix.html.

131 success using social-graph data: Charlie Stryler, Marketing Panel at 2010 Social Graph Symposium, Microsoft Campus, Mountain View, CA, May 21, 2010.

132 “the creditworthiness of your friends”: Julia Angwin, “Web’s New Gold Mine,” Wall Street Journal, July 30, 2010, accessed on Feb. 7, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703940904575395073512989404.html.

133 reality doesn’t work that way: David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Harvard Classics, volume 37, Section VII, Part I, online edition, (P. F. Collier & Son; 1910), accessed Feb. 7, 2011, http://18th.eserver.org/hume-enquiry.html.

133 purpose of science, for Popper: Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (New York: Routledge, 1992).

135 “no more incidents or adventures in the world”: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, trans. Richard Pevear and Laura Volokhonsky (New York: Random House, 1994), 24.

Chapter Five: The Public Is Irrelevant

137 “others who see what we see”: Hannah Arendt, The Portable Hannah Arendt (New York: Penguin, 2000), 199.

137 “neutralize the influence of the newspapers”: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Penguin, 2001).

138 “a gross violation of Chinese sovereignty”: “NATO Hits Chinese Embassy,” BBC News, May 8, 1999, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/338424.stm.

138 “most vital are the largely anonymous online forums”: Tom Downey, “China’s Cyberposse,” New York Times, Mar. 3, 2010, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Human-t.html?pagewanted=1.

138 “an elite, wired section of the population”: Shanthi Kalathil and Taylor Boas, “Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule,” First Monday 8, no. 1–6 (2003).

139 “Shareholders want to make money”: Clive Thompson, “Google’s China Problem (and China’s Google Problem),” New York Times, Apr. 23, 2006, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/magazine/23google.html.

139 “What the government cares about”: James Fallows, “The Connection Has Been Reset,” Atlantic, Mar. 2008, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/03/-ldquo-the-connection-has-been-reset-rdquo/6650.

139 “peer pressure, and self-censorship”: Fallows, “Connection Has Been Reset.”

140 “sense that they’re looking at everything”: Thompson, “Google’s China Problem.”

140 “Internet Police will maintain order”: Hong Yan, “Image of Internet Police: JingJang and Chacha Online,” China Digital Times, Feb. 8, 2006, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/internet-police/page/2.

140 “see my friends, live happily”: Thompson, “Google’s China Problem.”

140 “if Internet users have some porn”: Associated Press, “Web Porn Seeps Through China’s Great Firewall,” July 22, 2010, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/07/22/tech/main6703860.shtml.

141 “trying to nail Jell-O to the wall”: Bill Clinton, “America’s Stake in China,” Blueprint, June 1, 2000, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=108&subid=128&contentid=963.

142 “able to get handheld American flags?”: Laura Miller and Sheldon Rampton, “The Pentagon’s Information Warrior: Rendon to the Rescue,” PR Watch 8, no. 4 (2001).

142 “border patrols [are] replaced by beaming patrols”: John Rendon, as quoted in Franklin Foer, “Flacks Americana,” New Republic, May 20, 2002, accessed Feb. 9, 2011, www.tnr.com/article/politics/flacks-americana?page=0,2.

142 thesaurus: John Rendon, phone interview by author, Nov. 1, 2010.

143 “consume, distribute, and create”: Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, “The Digital Disruption: Connectivity and the Diffusion of Power,” Foreign Affairs (Nov.–Dec. 2010).

144 Flatow was an Olympic gymnast: Stephen P. Halbrook, “‘Arms in the Hands of Jews Are a Danger to Public Safety’: Nazism, Firearm Registration, and the Night of the Broken Glass, St. Thomas Law Review 21 (2009): 109–41, 110, www.stephenhalbrook.com/law_review_articles/Halbrook_macro_final_3_29.pdf.

145 the cloud “is actually just a handful of companies”: Clive Thompson, interview with author, Brooklyn, NY, Aug. 13, 2010.

145 there was nowhere to go: Peter Svensson, “WikiLeaks Down? Cables Go Offline After Site Switches Servers,” Huffington Post, Dec. 1, 2010, accessed Feb. 9, 2011, www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/01/wikileaks-down-cables-go-_n_790589.html.

145 “lose your constitutional protections immediately”: Christopher Ketcham and Travis Kelly, “The More You Use Google, the More Google Knows About You,” AlterNet, Apr. 9, 2010, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.alternet.org/investigations/146398/total_information_awareness:_the_more_you_use_google,_the_more_google_knows_about_you_?page=entire.

146 “cops will love this”: “Does Cloud Computing Mean More Risks to Privacy?,” New York Times, Feb. 23, 2009, accessed Feb. 8, 2011, http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/does-cloud-computing-mean-more-risks-to-privacy.

146 the three companies quickly complied: Antone Gonsalves, “Yahoo, MSN, AOL Gave Search Data to Bush Administration Lawyers,” Information Week, Jan. 19, 2006, accessed Feb. 9, 2011, www.informationweek.com/news/security/government/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=177102061.

146 predict future real-world events: Ketcham and Kelly, “The More You Use Google.”

146 “an individual must increasingly give information”: Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet—and How to Stop It (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 201.

147 “an implicit bargain in our behavior”: John Battelle, phone interview with author, Oct. 12, 2010.

147 “redistribution of information power”: Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 107.

148 real-world violence: George Gerbner, “TV Is Too Violent Even Without Executions,” USA Today, June 16, 1994, 12A, accessed Feb. 9, 2011 through LexisNexis.

149 “who tells the stories of a culture”: “Fighting ‘Mean World Syndrome,’” GeekMom blog, Wired, Jan. 27, 2011, accessed Feb. 9, 2011, www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/01/fighting-%E2%80%9Cmean-world-syndrome%E2%80%9D/.

149 friendly world syndrome: Dean Eckles, “The ‘Friendly World Syndrome’ Induced by Simple Filtering Rules,” Ready-to-Hand: Dean Eckles on People, Technology, and Inference blog, Nov. 10, 2010, accessed Feb. 9, 2011, www.deaneckles.com/blog/386_the-friendly-world-syndrome-induced-by-simple-filtering-rules/.

149 gravitated toward Like: “What’s the History of the Awesome Button (That Eventually Became the Like Button) on Facebook?” Quora Forum, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.quora.com/Facebook-company/Whats-the-history-of-the-Awesome-Button-that-eventually-became-the-Like-button-on-Facebook.

151 “against the cruise line industry”: Hollis Thomases, “Google Drops Anti-Cruise Line Ads from AdWords,” Web Ad.vantage, Feb. 13, 2004, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.webadvantage.net/webadblog/google-drops-anti-cruise-line-ads-from-adwords-338.

151–52 identify who was persuadable: “How Rove Targeted the Republican Vote,” Frontline, accessed Feb. 8, 2011, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/architect/rove/metrics.html.

152 “Amazon’s recommendation engine is the direction”: Mark Steitz and Laura Quinn, “An Introduction to Microtargeting in Politics,” accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.docstoc.com/docs/43575201/An-Introduction-to-Microtargeting-in-Politics.

153 round-the-clock “war room”: “Google’s War Room for the Home Stretch of Campaign 2010,” e.politics, Sept. 24, 2010, accessed Feb. 9, 2011, www.epolitics.com/2010/09/24/googles-war-room-for-the-home-stretch-of-campaign-2010/.

155 “campaign wanted to spend on Facebook”: Vincent R. Harris, “Facebook’s Advertising Fluke,” TechRepublican, Dec. 21, 2010, accessed Feb. 9, 2011, http://techrepublican.com/free-tagging/vincent-harris.

155 have the ads pulled off the air: Monica Scott, “Three TV Stations Pull ‘Demonstrably False’ Ad Attacking Pete Hoekstra,” Grand Rapids Press, May 28, 2010, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.mlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/05/three_tv_stations_pull_demonst.html.

157 “improve the likelihood that a registered Republican”: Bill Bishop, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008), 195.

157 “likely to be most salient in the politics”: Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 10.

159 Pabst began to sponsor hipster events: Neal Stewart, “Marketing with a Whisper,” Fast Company, Jan. 11, 2003, accessed Jan. 30, 2011, www.fastcompany.com/fast50_04/winners/stewart.html.

159 “$44 in US currency”: Max Read, “Pabst Blue Ribbon Will Run You $44 a Bottle in China,” Gawker, July 21, 2010, accessed Feb. 9, 2011, http://m.gawker.com/5592399/pabst-blue-ribbon-will-run-you-44-a-bottle-in-china.

160 “I serve as a blank screen”: Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (New York: Crown, 2006), 11.

161 “We lose all perspective”: Ted Nordhaus, phone interview with author, Aug. 31, 2010.

162 “the source is basically in thought”: David Bohm, Thought as a System (New York: Routledge, 1994) 2.

163 “participants in a pool of common meaning”: David Bohm, On Dialogue (New York: Routledge, 1996), x–xi.

164 “define and express its interests”: John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (Athens, OH: Swallow Press, 1927), 146.

Chapter Six: Hello, World!

165 “no intelligence or skill in navigation”: Plato, First Alcibiades, in The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 4, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1871), 559.

166 “We are as Gods”: Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog (self-published, 1968), accessed Dec. 16, 2010, http://wholeearth.com/issue/1010/article/195/we.are.as.gods.

167 “make any man (or woman) a god”: Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (New York: Penguin, 2001), 451.

167 “having some troubles with my family”: “How Eliza Works,” accessed Dec. 16, 2010, http://chayden.net/eliza/instructions.txt.

168 “way of acting without consequence”: Siva Vaidyanathan, phone interview with author, Aug. 9, 2010.

168 “not a very good program”: Douglas Rushkoff, interview with author, New York, NY, Aug. 25, 2010.

168 “politics tends to be seen by programmers”: Gabriella Coleman, “The Political Agnosticism of Free and Open Source Software and the Inadvertent Politics of Contrast,” Anthropological Quarterly, 77, no. 3 (Summer 2004): 507–19, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost.

170 “addictive control as well”: Levy, Hackers, 73.

172 “Howdy” is a better opener than “Hi”: Christian Rudder, “Exactly What to Say in a First Message,” Sept. 14, 2009, accessed Dec. 16, 2010, http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/online-dating-advice-exactly-what-to-say-in-a-first-message.

173 “hackers don’t tend to know any of that”: Steven Levy, “The Unabomber and David Gelernter,” New York Times, May 21, 1995, accessed Dec. 16, 2010, www.unabombers.com/News/95-11-21-NYT.htm.

174 “engineering relationships among people”: Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” Daedalus 109, no. 1 (Winter 1980): 121–36.

175 “code is law”: Lawrence Lessig, Code. (New York: Basic Books, 2006).

175 “choose structures for technologies”: Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics.”

176 Hacker Jargon File: The Jargon File, Version 4.4.7, Appendix B. A Portrait of J. Random Hacker, accessed Feb. 9, 2011, http://linux.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/jrgon/html/politics.html.

177 “social utility” as if it’s a twenty-first-century phone company: Mark Zuckerberg executive bio, Facebook press room, accessed on Feb. 8, 2011, http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?execbios.

178 “come to Google because they choose to”: Greg Jarboe, “A ‘Fireside Chat’ with Google’s Sergey Brin,” Search Engine Watch, Oct. 16, 2003, accessed Dec. 16,2010, http://searchenginewatch.com/3081081.

178 “the future will be personalized”: Gord Hotckiss, “Just Behave: Google’s Marissa Mayer on Personalized Search,” Searchengineland, Feb. 23, 2007, accessed Dec. 16, 2010, http://searchengineland.com/just-behave-googles-marissa-mayer-on-personalized-search-10592.

179 “It’s technology, not business or government”: David Kirpatrick, “With a Little Help from his Friends,” Vanity Fair (Oct. 2010), accessed Dec. 16, 2010, www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/10/sean-parker-201010.

179 “seventh kingdom of life”: Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants (New York: Viking, 2010).

180 “shirt or fleece that I own”: Mark Zuckerberg, remarks to Startup School Conference, XConomy, Oct. 18, 2010, accessed Feb. 8, 2010, www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/10/18/mark-zuckerberg-goes-to-startup-school-video//.

181 “ ‘the rest of the world is wrong’”: David A. Wise and Mark Malseed, The Google Story (New York: Random House, 2005), 42.

182 “tradeoffs with success in other domains”: Jeffrey M. O’Brien, “The PayPal Mafia,” Fortune, Nov. 14, 2007, accessed Dec. 16, 2010, http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/13/magazines/fortune/paypal_mafia.fortune/index2.htm.

183 sold to eBay for $1.5 billion: Troy Wolverton, “It’s official: eBay Weds PayPal,” CNET News, Oct. 3, 2002, accessed Dec. 16, 2010, http://news.cnet.com/Its-official-eBay-weds-PayPal/2100-1017_3-960658.html.

183 “impact and force change”: Peter Thie, “Education of a Libertarian,” Cato Unbound, Apr. 13, 2009, accessed Dec. 16, 2010, www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/the-education-of-a-libertarian.

183 “end the inevitability of death and taxes”: Chris Baker, “Live Free or Drown: Floating Utopias on the Cheap,” Wired, Jan. 19, 2009, accessed Dec. 16, 2010, www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/magazine/17-02/mf_seasteading?currentPage=all.

183 “ ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron”: Thiel, “Education of a Libertarian.”

184 “makes a living being against computers”: Nicholas Carlson, “Peter Thiel Says Don’t Piss Off the Robots (or Bet on a Recovery),” Business Insider, Nov. 18, 2009, accessed Dec. 16, 2010, www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-on-obama-ai-and-why-he-rents-his-mansion-2009-11#.

184 “which technologies to foster”: Ronald Bailey, “Technology Is at the Center,” Reason.com, May 2008, accessed Dec. 16, 2010, http://reason.com/archives/2008/05/01/technology-is-at-the-center/singlepage.

184 “way I think about the business”: Deepak Gopinath, “PayPal’s Thiel Scores 230 Percent Gain with Soros-Style Fund,” CanadianHedgeWatch .com, Dec. 4, 2006, accessed Jan. 30, 2011, at www.canadianhedgewatch.com/content/news/general/?id=1169.

184 “that voting will make things better”: Peter Thiel, “Your Suffrage Isn’t in Danger. Your Other Rights Are,” Cato Unbound, May 1, 2009, accessed Dec. 16, 2010, www.cato-unbound.org/2009/05/01/peter-thiel/your-suffrage-isnt-in-danger-your-other-rights-are.

185 talked to Scott Heiferman: Interview with author, New York, NY, Oct. 5, 2010.

188 “good or bad, nor is it neutral”: Melvin Kranzberg, “Technology and History: ‘Kranzberg’s Laws,’” Technology and Culture 27, no. 3 (1986): 544–60.

Chapter Seven: What You Want, Whether You Want It or Not

189 “millions of people doing complicated things”: Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort, The New Media Reader, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), 8.

189 “yet to be completely correlated”: Isaac Asimov, The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science (New York: Basic Books, 1965),

190 “you’ve got a problem”: Bill Jay, phone interview with author, Oct. 10, 2010.

191 ads tailored to her: Jason Mick, “Tokyo’s ‘Minority Report’ Ad Boards Scan Viewer’s Sex and Age,” Daily Tech, July 16, 2010, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.dailytech.com/Tokyos+Minority+Report+Ad+Boards+Scan+Viewers+Sex+and+Age/article19063.htm.

191 the future of art: David Shields, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (New York: Knopf, 2010). Credit to Michiko Kakutani, whose review led me to this book.

193 interrogated by a virtual agent: M. Ryan Calo, “People Can Be So Fake: A New Dimension to Privacy and Technology Scholarship,” Penn State Law Review 114 , no. 3 (2010): 810–55.

193 Kismet increased donations by 30 percent: Vanessa Woods, “Pay Up, You Are Being Watched,” New Scientist, Mar. 18, 2005, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.newscientist.com/article/dn7144-pay-up-you-are-being-watched.html.

193 “Computers programmed to be polite”: Calo, “People Can Be So Fake.”

194 “not evolved to twentieth-century technology”: Ibid.

195 identity and criminal record in seconds: Maureen Boyle, “Video: Catching Criminals? Brockton Cops Have an App for That,” Brockton Patriot Ledger, June 15, 2010, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.patriotledger.com/news/cops_and_courts/x1602636300/Catching-criminals-Cops-have-an-app-for-that.

195 “other images of you with ninety-five percent accuracy”: Jerome Taylor, “Google Chief: My Fears for Generation Facebook,” Independent, Aug. 18, 2010, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-chief-my-fears-for-generation-facebook-2055390.html.

197 “The future is already here”: William Gibson, interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, Aug. 31, 1993, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1107153.

197 your identity already tagged: “RFID Bracelet Brings Facebook to the Real World,” Aug. 20, 2010, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.psfk.com/2010/08/rfid-bracelet-brings-facebook-to-the-real-world.html.

198 “real world that can be indexed”: Reihan Salam, “Why Amazon Will Win the Internet,” Forbes, July 30, 2010, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.forbes.com/2010/07/30/amazon-kindle-economy-environment-opinions-columnists-reihan-salam.html.

198 “some have termed ‘smart dust’”: David Wright, Serge Gutwirth, Michael Friedewald, Yves Punie, and Elena Vildjiounaite, Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence (Berlin/Dordrecht: Springer Science, 2008): abstract.

199 four-year joint effort: Google/Harvard press release. “Digitized Book Project Unveils a Quantitative ‘Cultural Genome,’” accessed Feb. 8, 2011, http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news-events/news-archive/2010/digitized-books.

200 “censorship and propaganda”: Ibid.

200 nearly sixty languages: Google Translate Help Page, accessed Feb. 8, 2011, http://translate.google.com/support/?hl=en.

201 better and better: Nikki Tait, “Google to translate European patent claims,” Financial Times, Nov. 29, 2010, accessed Feb. 9, 2010, www.ft.com/cms/s/0/02f71b76-fbce-11df-b79a-00144feab49a.html.

202 “what to do with them”: Danny Sullivan, phone interview with author, Sept. 10, 2010.

202 “flash crash”: Graham Bowley, “Stock Swing Still Baffles, with an Ominous Tone,” New York Times, Aug. 22, 2010, accessed Feb. 8, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/business/23flash.html.

202 provocative article in Wired: Chris Anderson, “The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete,” Wired, June 23, 2008, accessed Feb. 10, 2010, http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_theory.

203 greatest achievement of human technology: Hillis quoted in Jennifer Riskin, Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 200.

204 “advertiser-funded media”: Marisol LeBron, “ ‘Migracorridos’: Another Failed Anti-immigration Campaign,” North American Congress of Latin America, Mar. 17, 2009, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, https://nacla.org/node/5625.

205 characters using the companies’ products throughout: Mary McNamara, “Television Review: ‘The Jensen Project,’” Los Angeles Times, July 16, 2010, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/16/entertainment/la-et-jensen-project-20100716.

205 product-placement hooks throughout: Jenni Miller, “Hansel and Gretel in 3D? Yeah, Maybe.” Moviefone blog, July 19, 2010, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, http://blog.moviefone.com/2010/07/19/hansel-and-gretel-in-3d-yeah-maybe.

205 the corporate owner of Lipslicks: Motoko Rich, “Product Placement Deals Make Leap from Film to Books,” New York Times, Nov. 9, 2008, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/arts/19iht-20bookplacement.10177632.html?pagewanted=all.

207 increase “purchase intentions” by 21 percent: John Hauser and Glen Urban, “When to Morph,” Aug. 2010, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, http://web.mit.edu/hauser/www/Papers/Hauser-Urban-Liberali_When_to_Morph_Aug_2010.pdf.

207 “turn it into useful information”: Jane Wardell, “Raytheon Unveils Scorpion Helmet Technology,” Associated Press, July 23, 2010, accessed Dec. 17, 2010 at www.boston.com/business/articles/2010/07/23/raytheon_unveils_scorpion_helmet_technology.

208 “turns the whole world into a display”: Wardell, “Raytheon Unveils Scorpion Helmet Technology.”

208 TV experience overlaid on a real game: Michael Schmidt, “To Pack a Stadium, Provide Video Better Than TV,” New York Times, July 28, 2010, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/sports/football/29stadium.html?_r=1.

208 AugCog, which uses cognitive neuroscience: Augmented Cognition International Society Web site, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.augmentedcognition.org.

209 500 percent increase in working memory: “Computers That Read Your Mind,” Economist, Sept. 21, 2006, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.economist.com/node/7904258?story_id=7904258.

209 at least sixteen different ways: Gary Hayes, “16 Top Augmented Reality Business Models,” Personalize Media (Gary Hayes’s blog), Sept. 14, 2009, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.personalizemedia.com/16-top-augmented-reality-business-models.

210 solve problems for people: Chris Coyne, interview with author, New York, NY, Oct. 6, 2010.

211 “reality” is “one of the few words”: Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (New York: Random House, 1997), 312.

213 powering the marketing campaigns: David Wright et al., Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence (London: Springer, 2008), 66, accessed through Google eBooks, Feb. 8, 2011.

214 “machines make more of their decisions”: Bill Joy, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” Wired (Apr. 2000) accessed Dec. 17, 2010, www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html.

Chapter Eight: Escape from the City of Ghettos

217 “the nature of his own person”: Christopher Alexander et al., A Pattern Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 8.

217 “Long Live the Web” Sir Tim Berners-Lee, “Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality,” Scientific American, Nov. 22, 2010.

219 “need to address the core issues”: Bill Joy, phone interview with author, Oct. 1 2010.

220 ideal nook for kids: Alexander et al., A Pattern Language, 445, 928–29.

220 “distinct pattern language”: Ibid., xvi.

220 “city of ghettos”: Ibid., 41–43.

221 “dampens all significant variety”: Ibid., 43.

221 “move easily from one to another”: Ibid., 48.

221 “support for his idiosyncrasies”: Ibid.

222 “psychological equivalent of obesity”: danah boyd. “Streams of Content, Limited Attention: The Flow of Information through Social Media,” Web2.0 Expo. New York, NY: Nov. 17, 2007, accessed July 19, 2008, www.danah.org/papers/talks/Web2Expo.html.

223 how to build a better mousetrap: “A Better Mousetrap,” This American Life no. 366, aired Oct. 10, 2008, www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/366/a-better-mousetrap-2008.

223 you’ll catch your mouse: Ibid.

223 “jumping out of that recursion loop”: Matt Cohler, phone interview with author, Nov. 23, 2010.

226 organ donation rates in different European countries: Dan Ariely as quoted in Lisa Wade, “Decision Making and the Options We’re Offered,” Sociological Images blog, Feb. 17, 2010, accessed Dec. 17, 2010, http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/02/17/decision-making-and-the-options-were-offered/.

229 “only when regulation is transparent”: Lawrence Lessig, Code (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 260, http://books.google.com/books?id=lmXIMZiU8yQC&pg=PA260&lpg=PA260&dq=lessig+political+response+transparent+code&source=bl&ots=wR0WRuJ61u&sig=iSIiM0pnEaf-o5VPvtGcgXXEeL8&hl=en&ei=1bI0TfykGsH38Ab7-tDJCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false.

230 “one of the world’s worst kept secrets”: Amit Singhal, “Is Google a Monopolist? A Debate,” Opinion Journal, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 17, 2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703466704575489582364177978.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#U301271935944OEB.

231 “honest and objective about ourselves”: “Philip Foisie’s memos to the management of the Washington Post,” Nov. 10, 1969, accessed Dec. 20, 2010, http://newsombudsmen.org/articles/origins/article-1-mcgee.

231 “the common good”: Arthur Nauman, “News Ombudsmanship: Its Theory and Rationale,” Press Regulation: How Far Has it Come? symposium, Seoul, South Korea, June 1994.

232 that this expectation is one that… most Americans share: Jeffrey Rosen, “The Web Means the End of Forgetting,” New York Times Magazine , July 21, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all.

235 “help it find a larger audience”: Author interview with confidential source.

237 Google is just a company: “Transcript: Stephen Colbert Interviews Google’s Eric Schmidt on The Colbert Report,” Search Engine Land, Sept. 22, 2010, accessed Dec. 20, 2010, http://searchengineland.com/googles-schmidt-colbert-report-51433.

237 expose their audiences to both sides: Cass R. Sunstein, Republic .com (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

240 “we shouldn’t have to accept”: Caitlin Petre phone interview with Marc Rotenberg, Nov. 5, 2010.

241 and 70 percent do: “Mistakes Do Happen: Credit Report Errors Mean Consumers Lose,” US PIRG, accessed Feb. 8, 2010, http://www.uspirg.org/home/reports/report-archives/financial-privacy–security/financial-privacy-security/mistakes-do-happen-credit-report-errors-mean-consumers-lose.