Untangling the Web: What the Internet is Doing to You

Guardian Faber, 2013

“It’s a hugely enjoyable, balanced treatment of an often inflammatory subject, that may well be one of the best guides to how we relate over the net that you’re likely to read for a long time.” - MindHacks

The World Wide Web is the most revolutionary innovation of our time. In the last decade, it has utterly transformed our lives. But what real effects is it having on our social world? What does it mean to be a modern family when dinner table conversations take place over smartphones? What happens to privacy when we readily share our personal lives with friends and corporations? Are our Facebook updates and Twitterings inspiring revolution or are they just a symptom of our global narcissism? What counts as celebrity, when everyone can have a following or be a paparazzo? And what happens to relationships when love, sex and hate can be mediated by a computer?

Social psychologist Aleks Krotoski spent a decade untangling the effects of the Web on how we work, live and play. In this groundbreaking book, she uncovered how much humanity has - and hasn't - changed because of our increasingly co-dependent relationship with the computer. In Untangling the Web , she told the story of how the network became woven in our lives, and what it means to be alive in the age of the Internet.

Based on a year of columns for The Observer newspaper.

Read the extensive research blog.

“Krotoski’s approach proves particularly illuminating. Her combination of cautious academic rigour and geek-like enthusiasm makes a very valuable contribution to the debate.” - Financial Times