The Disconnect: A Personal Journey Through the Internet

Description

We all live online now: the line between the internet and IRL has become porous to the point of being meaningless. Roisin Kiberd knows this better than anyone. She has worked for tech startups and as the online voice of a cheese brand; she's witnessed the bloated excesses of tech conferences and explored the strangest communities on the web. She has traced the ripples these hidden worlds have sent through our culture and politics, and experienced the disorienting effects on her own life. In these interlinked essays, she illuminates the subject with fierce clarity, revealing the ways we are more connected than ever before, and the disconnect this breeds. From the lure of the endless scroll, to the glamour of self-optimisation; from the cult of Energy Drinks to the nostalgic world of Vaporwave music; and from silicon town centres to dating tech bros, Kiberd explores the strange worlds, habits and people that have grown with the internet. She asks what we have gained, what we have lost, and what we have given willingly away in exchange for this connected life.

Roisin Kiberd's essays have been published in the Dublin Review, Stinging Fly and in the upcoming anthology Seizing the Memes of Production. She has written features on technology and culture for publications including the Guardian, the Outline, Vice UK and Motherboard, where she wrote a column about internet subcultures. She lives in Dublin.

Roisin Kiberd is a Dante of the internet, leading us through the infernal circles of our online damnation. The Disconnect is a brilliant debut collection - unsettling, illuminating, and perversely fun - by a writer of extraordinary style and intellectual range. -- Mark O'Connell, author * To Be A Machine * Excellent: full of sharp analysis of life online, insomnia, dating apps and with a grand unified theory of Monster Energy drinks ... I felt both seen and like I could see more after reading this collection. -- Amy Liptrot, author * The Outrun * Roisin Kiberd has found the words to capture what it feels like to live, as they say online, 'in the bad timeline.' ... The joy lies in Kiberd's lucid prose, in the possibilities she presents, in her clarity of thought. -- Nicole Flattery, author of 'Show Them a Good Time' Both a warning about our lives in the worst of all possible worlds and the silent scream of every child birthed in the Internet's fractured womb. A long overdue message delivered by a writer with a first-rate intellect and curiosity who's unafraid to turn heat-vision on the self and, thus, all selves. -- Jarrett Kobek, author of 'I Hate the Internet' Spectacular. A book that takes on, makes sense of, and triumphs over that shapeless techno-dread with which we're now so sickeningly familiar. It's lion-hearted in its honesty, and insightful to the point of brilliance. All I'd hoped for and exactly what I needed. -- Lisa McInerney, author of The Glorious Heresies As deep as it is wide-ranging, The Disconnect is a smart, timely, and beautifully intimate investigation into how the internet is turning us all inside-out. -- Ian Maleney, author * Minor Monuments * One of our brightest young writers. -- Martin Doyle * Irish Times * It's sharp, sad and funny ... If you, like me, have ever had to cut yourself off from an endless scroll and then felt the existential weight of being at once plugged into and removed from the rest of the world, then this book is for you. -- Vicky Spratt * Refinery 29 * Gripping and fascinating -- Andrew Marr, Start the Week, BBC Radio 4 I can't wait for Roisin Kiberd's The Disconnect - the sharpest writer with the most glorious and zippy mind. -- John Patrick McHugh, author of Pure Gold A rare and wonderful attempt to acknowledge that, for many of us now, the distinction between "real-life" and the more nebulous realities that the internet provides us with have, in a very real sense, broken down. * Dublin Review of Books * Setting the rise of technology and the companies that harness it against her own upbringing, personal struggles, the alienation of working freelance in post-austerity Ireland, Kiberd wades through the depths of the internet's effects on her personally, the places it's driven her to, and what she's taken away from it. A wake-up call, cause for self-examination, and a valuable piece of cultural anthropology. -- Mike McGrath-Bryan * Irish Examiner * Superb -- Claire Hennessy * Irish Examiner * Kiberd is an enlightening and laser-sharp conversationalist, always keen to pursue a tangent if she sees one running off into the distance. Her book is equal parts absorbing and disconcerting, while her weaving of opinions, in-depth research and confessional soul-searching is indicative of a writer unafraid to poke her nose into areas usually left covered ... Sharp-witted, self-aware, extremely confessional * Irish Independent * Kiberd has a knack for describing with laser precision the shape and mood of an event, experience or emotion and a real skill for applied analysis. * The Irish Times * Illuminating and insightful ... Fresh and unique * RTE Guide * Kiberd's writing is funny and frank, punchy and poetic, emotional and earnest. She writes with bravery and honesty about her struggles with depression, bulimia and anxiety -- JP O'Malley * Irish Independent * Blazingly smart ... highly recommended * Business Post * A blistering collection ... marvellous ... profoundly, touchingly human. * Irish Daily Mail * Wildly impressive, interesting and entertaining * The Irish Times *