The Importance of Shared Background Knowledge in Books

Welcome to episode 344 of the show with Professor Justin E. H. Smith, author of The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is, joining us on the program to discuss topics from his book. “An original deep history of the internet that tells the story of the centuries-old utopian dreams behind it—and explains why they have died today. Many think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of modern human technology.”

Justin Erik Halldór Smith is an American-Canadian professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Paris 7 – Denis Diderot. He has authored several books and is also a sometime contributor to The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, n+1, Slate, and Art in America. Smith is an editor-at-large of Cabinet Magazine. Since the fall of 2020, Smith has been publishing philosophical and critical essays on his Substack newsletter, Justin E. H. Smith’s Hinternet.

Smith’s primary research interests include Leibniz, early modern philosophy, history and philosophy of biology, classical Indian philosophy, and the history and philosophy of anthropology.