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Dear friend or acquaintance of Bob McChesney,

I am writing you to tell you about my new book on the Internet that may interest you. It is titled Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Away from Democracy. The book is a political economic examination of the digital revolution based upon 15 years of research. The book provides considerable detail but also an overarching analysis and argument, so it is intended for anyone concerned with the Internet. It is the capstone of my career.

• how the standard dichotomy of views on the Internet as “celebratory” or skeptical” have important and necessary insights, but they almost all fail to factor in or appreciate the importance of capitalism as the driving force, as well as the problems capitalism can create for democratic values and practices
• a fresh look at  the noncommercial origins of the Internet, and the shadowy process whereby it was converted into an engine for commercialism
• how the dinosaur industries of telecommunication and entertainment media have managed to survive and even prosper in the Internet era by their domination of the corrupt policymaking process
• how the Internet, once seen as an engine of economic competition, has become arguably the greatest generator of economic monopoly in history, with troubling implications for both the economy and political democracy; the dominant Internet firms now comprise nearly one-half of the 30 largest publicly traded corporations  in the United States, based on market value
• how advertising has been radically transformed online such that traditional notions of privacy have been eliminated, and the traditional support for media content advertising once provided is disappearing
• how the national security state has surveillance powers over private citizens that were unimaginable a generation ago and are inimical to the foundations of a free society
• how the Internet has assisted in destroying journalism as it has been practiced for the past century, and offers no hope on its own of rejuvenating journalism as a credible broad-based democratic institution; this chapter updates the research I did with John Nichols in 2010’s multiple-award-winning Death and Life of American Journalism (Nation Books)
• how a series of crucial policy debates in the next decade will go a long way toward determining the course of the Internet and the course of society.