The Internet

WSJ reporter Jeff Horwitz says Facebook executives often choose to boost engagement at the expense of tackling misinformation and mental health problems, which are rampant on their platforms.

New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz spent years with far-right online extremists, embedding with them and watching them spread false news by exploiting social media. His new book is Antisocial.

Verge journalist Casey Newton investigated working conditions for the people who determine what material can be posted to Facebook. Many are traumatized by the images of hate and violence they see.

NY Times cybersecurity correspondent Nicole Perlroth says hacking tools developed by the NSA were stolen, posted online and are now being used in cyberattacks, including one on the city of Baltimore.

Barlow, who died on Wednesday, was associated with the Grateful Dead since its early days. He went on to become a proponent of a free and open Internet. Originally broadcast in 1996.

Enter Me

Jamie Bartlett exposes an encrypted underworld to the Internet in his book The Dark Net: "Anybody with something to hide, whether it's for good reasons or for ill, finds a very natural home there."

In The Innovators, Walter Isaacson explains that Pentagon officials wanted a system the Russians couldn't attack, and 1984 made the public wary of new technology's Big Brother potential.

Some of the nation's restaurants are using technology to make diners commit before their night out. It's convenient for the restaurant an customer -- and it may pry people away from old habits.

Pinterest has created a database of things that matter to humans. And with a programming team that's largely been hired away from Google, the company has begun offering what it calls "guided search."

The U.S. needs to start treating the Internet like electricity or railroads, law professor and author Susan Crawford says. "We can't create a level playing field for all Americans or indeed compete on the world stage without having some form of government involvement," she says.

Today's Internet users have become accustomed to stories of hacking, identity theft and cyberattacks, but there was a time when the freedom and anonymity of the Web were new, and no one was sure what rules — if any — applied to its use.

What does the Internet look like? Journalist Andrew Blum decided to find out. His new book, Tubes, is a journey into the Internet's physical infrastructure -- where our data is stored and transmitted.

Vogue Magazine film critic John Powers talks about the year in media: the major events, the trending topics and the evolution of social networking.

Media critic Ken Auletta tracks the development of Google from a search engine to the provider of all things Internet in his new book Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.

Recent controversies such as Google's business in China and the U.S. government's role in policing eBay transactions have put a spotlight on the intersection between governments and the Internet. Legal scholars Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu address the issue in their new book, Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers how we think bout the Internet and how that is reflected in the language we use to describe it.

Co-founders Larry Page And Sergey Brin discuss the history and workings of Google.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg reflects on the evolution of World Wide Web naming conventions, such as attaching "e" or "cyber" in front of everything Internet.