IGX

An exploration of peep culture. Why do so many of us expose ourselves on the internet in so many ways? Why do we do it in reality shows, and why does everyone peep? What’s with the tedium of tweeting and why the widespread confessions and oversharing on social networks. IGX could have been a chapter, but didn’t make this cut.

The author interviews reality show participants and wanna-be’s, bloggers who tell all, bloggers who show all, and delves into what motivates the exposers and the watchers and how it melds into real life. He introduces you to all sorts of interesting characters, and speculates a lot about the human need to be somebody in a social world. He reviews technological developments and how they allow us to snoop on each other and allow the government to snoop on all of us. He asks what’s left of the concept of privacy.

The book sprawls. A good editor could have made it 178 pages rather than 278. And the author is as confused at the end of his journey as he was at the beginning – how much should we expose and how much keep private? Is Peep good in creating the types of communities similar to the small societies of yesteryear or is it creating an obsessive vacuum of idiots sucking in mounds of trivial nothing?

All in all, quite an eye-opener, especially for those of us with kids who don’t see the world yet from their vantage point. This book helps give you that perspective.