Accessible guide to the effect, good and bad, of the internet on our everyday lives. Our society has gone through a weird, unremarked transition: once a novelty, the Net is now something that we take for granted. In the process we've been surprisingly incurious about its significance or cultural implications. How has our society become dependent on a utility that it doesn't really understand? John Naughton has distilled the noisy chatter surrounding the internet's relentless evolution into nine clear-sighted areas of understanding.