Dark Side of Our Digital World

Andrew Weiss is a digital services librarian at California State University, Northridge. His work is mainly concerned with developing our open access institutional repository and scholarly communication services for CSUN’s faculty, staff and students. He helps with the collection of open access faculty publications, ETDs, university archives, data management and data management planning. He also provides guidance and informal advice about copyright and publisher’s agreements. Andrew’s area of research investigates digital publishing, digital collections, massive digital libraries (MDLs), and, lately, big data and information pathologies – including privacy, fake news and the proliferation of misinformation. He has written a previous book, Big Data Shocks, and numerous peer-reviewed articles and conference proceedings about MDLs, Big Data, privacy, open access, and so on. Additionally, Andrew has written about Open Access and the issues of scholarly communication, too, which also fit within the movement of open science and data management. As a long-time librarian, Andrew believes balancing the need for privacy with creating public personae in the digital world will continue to be a central problem for our profession.

• ContentsList of illustrations and tablesAcknowledgmentsDedicationPreface: The dark side of our digital worldPart I: Information and the weapons of mass-distractionChapter 1: Into the ‘upside-down’: identifying our problem Chapter 2: Online Behavioral ConditioningChapter 3: ‘Nudged’: Why your decisions may not be your ownChapter 4: Surveillance capitalism and the ‘New Economy’Part II: Drinking directly from a firehose: the impact of information glut, conspiracy theories, and Internet BalkanizationChapter 5: Information overload and how to combat itChapter 6: Conspiracy, belief, and the compromising of researchChapter 7: “Whose culture is it, anyway?” Ownership of culture in a digitized world in danger of fragmentingPart III: Information and PowerChapter 8: The Online Surveillance StateChapter 9: Disinformation, misinformation, and “reality”Chapter 10: The Anti-social network: Dealing with online social media misbehaviors and pathologiesPart IV: Draining the fever swampChapter 11: Combating the Trolls and ‘BotsChapter 12: How to keep your privacy – and still live in the real worldChapter 13: Wide Awake: The future of democracy, digital commons and digital rights advocacy About the AuthorIndex

RECOMMENDED. . . [Weiss] explores the many ills that accompany modern internet-mediated society, from data loss to trolling to surveillance capitalism. Weiss presents these as what he calls "information pathologies," and in discussing them he compares the visible and underlying issues in information to the symptoms and root causes of a disease. . . . Weiss's overview of all these problems would be useful for readers looking for an entry point into this community of thought.