Cole Stryker

Looking for a book, as I was, to explain internet culture to your mom? This will probably fit the bill. Not a lot of new information to anyone who has spent any amount of time poking around the internet, but then that's not why I picked it up. I've seen some valid criticism of this book floating around: large chunks seem cut and pasted, there is little original content, and there is something sort of inherently shitty about someone taking a bunch of free, not for profit content generated by others, compressing it into a book, and selling it. If it's any consolation, a book project like this (small print run, mid range publisher) is not exactly a fast track to fortune. It'll probably keep Stryker in tacos for a year, if he's lucky. And despite the opportunistic nature of the project and Stryker's unfortunate tendency to sound a little snide, some genuine idealism shines through. It's clear that Stryker really wants to communicate to a non-internet addicted audience what is so beautiful and so horrifying about the internet, and that what's really important is fighting for our freedom to express ourselves either way. It would have been nice if this book had delved a little more into the ethos of geek culture but whatever. There are other sources for that. And the trip down meme memory lane was really quite enjoyable.
So, in short, I think my parents, and people like them, who are baffled by alarmist news specials about legions of unhinged hackers lurking around the internet causing random mayhem, will learn a lot, which is all I really hoped for from this book.… (meer)