Digital Disconnect By Robert Mcchesney: Summary

The Internet appeared in the 1900s but became widely popular in the 1980s and in the 1990s. Robert McChesney’s book titled “ Digital Disconnect” talks about how corporations have been able to monopolize the Internet for worse. The book goes on to tell how it prevents the expansion of democracy and promotes inequality through many forms, one being capitalism. To understand how capitalism got a hold of the Internet and why, people need to understand how capitalism got to the way it is now. As stated in McChesney’s book 8 to 10 thousand years ago, humans created a surplus of what was needed and it was being overproduced in agriculture and with domesticating animals, so people would begin to trade or sell in order to get other things they

Social media has been used to spread multiple agendas but it also helps spread inequality. I myself have a Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat as well as twitter and I witnessed and encountered multiple forms of hate as well as criticism from a group of people to another or just individuals attacking one another online. I have personally seen a rise of racism since the 2016 presidential elections on all social media platforms. Although the more the elections were promoted, people began to be more hateful, money was being made from advertisements for local campaigns to support certain party members, as well as corporations who supplied internet to people. During that time, my own internet bill was going to go up about ten dollars more a month due to certain “specials” coming out that year to try to switch up the way consumers used the internet. I have what was once Time Warner for internet but have been switched to spectrum once the company changed and they were still charging extra fees for the change even though it was all their own doing. There was really no explanation as to why prices would keep going up other than the fact that the company had a change of name. The internet is mainly used for homework but social media is always one tab