“The web never quite lived up to its lofty promises, and now it’s entered a state of widespread decay. But to everyone who came of age, found work, or met their people online, there’s still much to savor and much worth saving. In this haunting, personal, and singular book, John West explores the ways that the digital sphere collects and contorts our personal histories and binds them up in the fates of programs and platforms. After all, those of us who have grown up with the internet must ultimately grapple with the fact that we will die with it.”
—Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech
“Most writing about the dying internet is either nostalgic or doom-y. John West has found a third register: clear-eyed, alive, even quite funny. A book about loss that’s somehow a pleasure.”
—PJ Vogt, host of Search Engine
“When you’re a kid, you think what’s on the internet will last forever. When you’re an adult, you realize that’s a lie. This book is a lovely meditation on what it means to reckon with one’s own mortality, the impermanence of the digital, and the mysteries of faith.”
—Meredith Broussard, NYU professor and author of Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World
“The internet only ever captures more and more of our time and attention, yet everyone struggles with the way it leaves us feeling empty. Calling on familiar traditions and profoundly new insights, John West offers us a way to find the meaning and soul that’s missing in today’s technology.”
—Anil Dash, technologist and writer
“At once informed and panoptical, John West’s The Internet Will Die, and So Will You probes the mutability and ephemerality of the digital systems that now enfold us. As the title suggests, he widens his reckoning to include us, their mutable and ephemeral users.”
—Sven Birkerts, author of Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age
“Remember when wasting time on the internet felt like a choice you were making—with all the joy and guilt of a bad decision consciously taken? Remember when you had to remind yourself to check your email? John West’s lovely book won’t give you back all the hours that you let the infinite scroll steal from you, but it will restore a little of that consciousness of choice. Like the best Web 1 sites, this book is strange, intelligent, and gratifyingly hard to classify.”
—Phil Christman, author of Why Christians Should Be Leftists
Praise for Previous Work
“John West’s pursuit of truth and beauty in this book is both masterful and unforgettable.”
—Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I’m Someone Else
“[West] can make moments of the highest lyricism, also moments of perfect clarity.”
—Shane McCrae, author of The Gilded Auction Block
“[A] melodic and observant book unafraid to circle the complexities of love and parenthood. Smart, potent, and fearless writing.”
—Megan Mayhew Bergman, author of How Strange a Season
“West finds possibilities for language that birth possibilities for how to be. A singular book.”
—James K. A. Smith, author of Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark
“With sensitivity and wild intelligence, John West . . . enlists the power of poetry, the consolation of philosophy, and the intense scrutiny of the autobiographical to describe—lyrically and movingly—the reconstruction of the self.”
—Mark Wunderlich, author of God of Nothingness
“Memoirs composed of sections are tempting to a writer, but the deeper difficulties belie the seeming ease. The overall rhythm, the weave of recurrence, the manipulation of the timeline—every element must be tuned by instinct. John West has that instinct. . . . Self-scouring at every turn, [Lessons and Carols] pays off in shocks of joy and affirms the grounding sobriety of parenthood.”
—Sven Birkerts, editor emeritus of AGNI and author of Then, Again: The Art of Time in the Memoir
