Anton Barba-Kay, A Web of Our Own Making: The Nature of Digital Formation (2023)

I began this book with great hope - after all, Nicholas Carr, whose books on the internet (The Shallows) and social media (Superbloom) I have found so perceptive, had endorsed it. Alas, the work disappointed. Perhaps I was at fault, but I was never able to tap into its argument. A Web reads like an extended piece in the Feuilleton of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - allusive, polemical, serpentine. The book prioritizes phenomenological observations about the nature of the web, which it renders in often poetical-paradoxical phrases and pretentious words. Barba-Kay provides scant evidence for his claims. He tends toward hyperbole (only "the bomb" - i.e. the nuclear bomb - rivals and parallels the web in eschatological significance). Not only did I not find myself persuaded by most of these big claims; I didn't even find them particularly arresting. After scant 100 pages, I put the book aside - something I rarely do. Given Carr's high standing in my eyes, though, maybe I'll look up reviews of the book and see if any of them can show me what I missed.