The Internet We Could Have Had

What happened to the internet we could have had? Can we remember a future that did not come to pass? The Internet We Could Have Had takes up the challenge, revisiting the days of "end-to-end" networks, of net neutrality, of free and open source software, the days of Geocities and the lulz of Anonymous. Not as nostalgia, but as a reckoning with the internet we do have. The internet we could have had was a promise; it could have been a global brain, an end to monopoly capitalism, a liberation of free speech. How did we get from there to here: to surveillance capitalism and data colonialism, facing an extractive AI industry and a fragmented social media landscape powered by misinformation and advertising? Where did it all go wrong? What happened to the promise of the internet and how did it become the disaster we know today?Part political inquest, part theoretical autopsy, Kelty documents how aspirations of liberation, openness, and participatory democracy opened a door — and through that door walked the Facebook Like Button, Amazon Web Services, Google’s Chrome browser and much more. A work of concerted remembering, The Internet We Could Have Had is an attempt to fathom how this past was immensely generative of a future we didn't ask for.

• Publication date: 4 September 2026
• Page count: 240
• Dimensions: Height 222 mm; Width 148 mm; Thickness 22 mm
• Publisher: Polity Press
• Format: Hardback
• ISBN-13: 9781509574506