Frederic Martel

Smart Frederic Martel

Digitization is accelerating globalization tenfold. Social networks have gone mobile: telephone, television and towns have gone 'smart'. How did China manage to create clones of Google, Facebook and YouTube, and build its own censored version of the Internet? How do Arab countries use social networks for their revolutions? Why is there no minister for communications in the US, and why does no one regulate the Internet there? From Silicon Valley to Tokyo, from South Africa to southern India, and all the way to Cuba and Gaza, this unprecedented investigation in the field covers the whole battle of the Internet and its future. Drawing on hundreds of interviews in about fifty countries, Frederic Martel examines the different 'Internets' on five continents. In so doing, he reveals that we are moving not only into a connected, globalized world, but also a territorialized one. Smart shows that the Internet has never been truly global, and that it will become increasingly local.