# Net Smart: How to Thrive Online *By Howard Rheingold, illustrated by Anthony Weeks. MIT Press, 2012 (hardcover and e-book); paperback 2014.* > I did not read this book, not even in part. I could not open its text: MIT Press's pages returned a 403 to me, the author's page for the sample chapter returned a 404, and I did not use any unauthorized full-text copy. This dossier is built from the book's table of contents as shown in a library catalog and on JSTOR, the publisher and MIT Media Lab descriptions, and from reviews and interviews I did open (Nieman Lab, Information Research, Henry Jenkins's interview, the opening of the Washington Post review). Section 5 is therefore a reconstruction from those, not a chapter-by-chapter reading. No source note mentioned the book; I wrote it on request. ## 1. Book facts | | | |---|---| | Title | *Net Smart: How to Thrive Online* | | Author | Howard Rheingold (sole author); illustrations by Anthony Weeks (Goodreads lists him as illustrator) | | Publisher | The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts | | First published | 2012. A search snippet of MIT Press's listing gives March 16, 2012 for the hardcover and e-book; I could not open that page. Information Research's review is dated August 2012, the Nieman Lab piece May 11, 2012 | | Paperback | Feb 14, 2014 (Open Library record for ISBN 9780262526135) | | ISBNs | Hardcover 9780262017459 (also the ISBN in Information Research's review header). Paperback 9780262526135 (Open Library). E-book 9780262300728 (from the MIT Press URL pattern and a search snippet; not confirmed on a page I opened) | | Length | Sources disagree: 322 pages (Open Library paperback record; "ix, 322 p." in the Information Research review), 336 pages (MIT Press listing, from a search snippet), 333 pages for the online edition (Malmö University Library catalog snippet). | | Language | English | | Audiobook | I found none. Audible's search page does not render results for me, so this is unconfirmed | | Where it came up | Marshall asked for it on 2026-11-03 as part of "all of Howard Rheingold's books" | ## 2. Book resources **Free (legal).** I found no legal free full text. - **Sample material.** MIT Press and the MIT Media Lab both say a table of contents and a sample chapter can be downloaded. The Media Lab's [MLTalks page](https://www.media.mit.edu/videos/rheingold-2012-05-10/) has a "Download the table of contents (PDF) here" line, but I could not find the file's URL in the page's source. The author's old page for the book (rheingold.com/books/net-smart/) now returns a 404. - **Chapter list on JSTOR.** [JSTOR's page for the book](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7ztdvb) lists the front matter, introduction, six chapters, notes and index. I did not check whether reading it needs an institutional login or library access. - **Libby/OverDrive and Hoopla.** [OverDrive](https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=net%20smart%20rheingold) and [Hoopla](https://www.hoopladigital.com/search?q=net%20smart%20rheingold) search pages load, but their results are not visible from my box. I cannot say which libraries own it. Search your own library in Libby. - **Internet Archive.** My Internet Archive search for the title and author returned no items. **Open Library** has [records for it](https://openlibrary.org/isbn/9780262017459) but no borrowable e-book that I could see. - **Project Gutenberg.** Not applicable; it is a 2012 book. **Paid.** - **Amazon.** [Hardcover page (ISBN-10 0262017458)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262017458) and [paperback page (0262526131)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262526131) both load, but I could not parse a price or a Kindle listing from them. I did not confirm Kindle availability. - **Everand (Scribd).** A search result pointed to an [Everand page](https://www.everand.com/book/770543201/Net-Smart-How-to-Thrive-Online); it showed me only a "Client Challenge" screen, so I cannot say what it offers or whether it needs a subscription. - **Used copies:** [AbeBooks](https://www.abebooks.com/9780262017459/Net-Smart-Thrive-Online-Rheingold-0262017458/plp) loads; I did not read prices. - **Audible:** none found. **Cover:** [Open Library cover image](https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/10203468-L.jpg) (paperback record). ## 3. Author biography Howard Rheingold (born July 7, 1947, Phoenix, Arizona; Reed College; per [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Rheingold)) is an American writer, critic and teacher on the cultural and social effects of communication media. The MIT Media Lab's event biography for this book's launch lists him as author of *Virtual Reality*, *The Virtual Community*, *Smart Mobs* and *Net Smart*, editor of *The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog*, founding executive editor of HotWired and founder of Electric Minds; it says he taught as an appointed lecturer at UC Berkeley and Stanford, was a non-resident fellow at the Annenberg Center for Communication and a visiting professor at De Montfort University, which awarded him an honorary doctorate of technology. His site is [rheingold.com/howard](https://www.rheingold.com/howard). Earlier in this vault: *Tools for Thought* (1985) and *Mind Amplifier* (2012), the TED e-book that re-visits the lineage Rheingold says leads to this book. ## 4. Author interviews and talks - **MIT Media Lab MLTalks, May 10, 2012.** [Page](https://www.media.mit.edu/videos/rheingold-2012-05-10/). A talk co-presented with MIT Press, followed by a conversation with Joi Ito and Mimi Ito. The page's blurb says the book shows how to use social media "intelligently, humanely, and, above all, mindfully". I did not watch the video. - **Nieman Lab, "Howard Rheingold on how the five web literacies are becoming essential survival skills" (Justin Ellis, May 11, 2012).** [Article](https://www.niemanlab.org/2012/05/howard-rheingold-on-how-the-five-web-literacies-are-becoming-essential-survival-skills/). A report on the MIT talk. I read it in full. It quotes Rheingold: "If, like many others, you are concerned social media is making people and cultures shallow, I propose we teach more people how to swim and together explore the deeper end of the pool." - **Henry Jenkins, "How Did Howard Rheingold Get So 'Net Smart': An Interview" (Aug 13, 2012, three parts).** [Part one](https://henryjenkins.org/blog/2012/08/how-did-howard-rheingold-get-so-net-smart-an-interview-part-one.html) (read), [part two](https://henryjenkins.org/blog/2012/08/how-did-howard-rheingold-get-so-net-smart-an-interview-part-two.html) and [part three](https://henryjenkins.org/blog/2012/08/how-did-howard-rheingold-get-so-net-smart-an-interview-part-three.html) (the pages load; I did not read them). Jenkins says Rheingold interviewed him for the book, and that he knows him well, so treat the praise accordingly. - **Talks at Google: "Net Smart: How to Thrive Online | Howard Rheingold".** [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vajSK1jV56A). I confirmed the page title only; I did not watch it. ## 5. Summary **Thesis, as others report it.** Whether networked media are good for us "depends on what people know, and how many of them know it", in Rheingold's own words in part one of the Jenkins interview. The book argues for five learnable digital literacies: attention, participation, collaboration, critical consumption of information ("crap detection") and "network smarts". Nieman Lab reports that he rejects the view that Google makes us stupid or Facebook lonely, and wants people to "connect our attention to our intention". The MIT Media Lab blurb adds a social claim: small acts like publishing a page or sharing a link could "add up to a public good that enriches everybody". **Chapter outline.** Headings come from the contents list in the Malmö University Library catalog (a search-result snippet; the page itself did not load for me) and the JSTOR chapter list. Neither shows page numbers, so none are given. The notes under each heading are from reviews, not from the text, and I could not check them against it. - **Introduction: Why You Need Digital Know-How, Why We All Need It.** Sections include "Who Needs to Read This Book, and Why?", "How Our Learning Journey Will Proceed" and "Dreaming of Mind Amplifiers: A Personal Journey" (see the vault note on *Mind Amplifier* for that story). - **1. Attention! Why and How to Control Your Mind's Most Powerful Instrument.** Sections: "Conscious Distraction: Are You Captain or Captive of Your Attention Muscles?", "(Using) the Internet Makes Us Stupid (or Not)", "Mindfulness in an Always-On World", "Training the Puppy Mind". The Information Research reviewer says it links attention to mindfulness as in meditation practice. - **2. Crap Detection 101: How to Find What You Need to Know, and How to Decide If It's True.** Sections: "How to Search and How to Know", "Tuning Your Crap Detector", "Infotention: Attention to Information". The reviewer calls it essential but "rather discursive" for a how-to chapter. - **3. Participation Power.** Sections: "Participatory Culture", "Participation Skills: Skating up the Power Law of Participation", "Curation Is Short for 'We're All Each Other's Filter'", "Playbor: Do You Know Who Profits from Your Participation?", "Footprints and Profiles: How You Look to Others . . . and Yourself", "Twitter Literacy". - **4. Social-Digital Know-How: The Arts and Sciences of Collective Intelligence.** Sections: "Collective Intelligence: When All of Us Can Be Smarter Than Any of Us", "Virtual Communities: Networking Hearts as well as Minds", "Crowdsourcing: Supersizing Cooperation", "Social Production", "Wiki Collaboration". The reviewer says Wikipedia gets a good deal of space and that Rheingold recounts meetings with Jimmy Wales. - **5. Social Has a Shape: Why Networks Matter.** Sections: "Social Network Analysis", "Networked Individualism", "Social Capital", "Tuning and Feeding Personal Learning Networks", "Facing Facebook's Facts of Life". - **6. How (Using) the Web (Mindfully) Can Make You Smarter.** Sections: "Digging into Dataveillance", "The Public Sphere", "Remix Ethics and the Politics of Enclosure", "What's a Parent to Do? What's a Parent to Know?", "Five Literacies in a Nutshell", "Literacy as Lever, as Divide". Then Notes and Index. - The Information Research review's own chapter numbers do not match this list in places (it puts collaboration in "Chapter 6"), so I used the library and JSTOR lists for structure. **Reception (as reported by others).** Goodreads' search page shows 4.02 average from 295 ratings across 2 editions (Nov 3, 2026). Henry Jenkins calls it "a major contribution to the growing body of literature around New Media Literacies". The Information Research reviewer (Tom Wilson, Aug 2012) is mixed: the book sits "rather uneasily between a 'how-to-do-it' manual, which could have been less than 100 pages, and a scholarly exposition", and he objects to the proliferation of "literacies". The Washington Post reviewed it with another book on May 11, 2012 (Mike Musgrove); I could read only the opening paragraph, about Plato's fear that writing would dull memory. Science and Social Media Today reviews showed up in my search results; I did not open either. This is not a balanced survey of critical response. ## 6. Fact-check Overall verdict: **mixed**. Publication and structure are checked against catalog or review pages; claims inside the book are not checked, because I did not read it. | Claim | Verdict | Evidence | |---|---|---| | MIT Press, 2012, ISBN 9780262017459 | Supported | Information Research review header; Malmö catalog snippet | | Release date March 16, 2012 | Partly checked | Search snippet of the MIT Press listing only; the page returned 403 | | Paperback Feb 14, 2014, ISBN 9780262526135 | Supported | Open Library record | | Page count | Disputed across sources | 322 (Open Library, Information Research); 336 (MIT Press snippet); 333 (Malmö online edition) | | Five literacies: attention, participation, collaboration, crap detection, network smarts | Supported | Nieman Lab and the MIT Media Lab page, both from the author's talk; Jenkins's interview | | Six numbered chapters plus introduction | Supported | Malmö catalog contents (snippet) and JSTOR's chapter list | | MIT Media Lab talk on May 10, 2012 | Supported | Media Lab page; Nieman Lab says "Thursday" and May 10, 2012 was a Thursday | | Birth date July 7, 1947 | Supported | Wikipedia | | Illustrator Anthony Weeks | Partly checked | Goodreads search page; not confirmed on a publisher page | | E-book ISBN 9780262300728 | Not confirmed | Only from a URL pattern and a search snippet | | Kindle and Audible availability | Not confirmed | Amazon and Audible pages did not yield usable results | | Claims made inside the book | Not checked | I did not read it | ## 7. Citations and references - Book listings: [Amazon hardcover](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262017458), [Amazon paperback](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262526131), [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/isbn/9780262017459), [Open Library paperback](https://openlibrary.org/isbn/9780262526135), [Goodreads search](https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=net+smart+rheingold), [JSTOR](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7ztdvb), [AbeBooks](https://www.abebooks.com/9780262017459/Net-Smart-Thrive-Online-Rheingold-0262017458/plp). MIT Press's own page (mitpress.mit.edu) returned 403 to me. The Malmö University Library contents note (lib.mau.se/bib/3173188) is cited from a search-result snippet; the page did not load for me. - Reviews: [Information Research review R456 (Tom Wilson, Aug 2012)](https://informationr.net/ir/reviews/revs456.html); [Washington Post (Mike Musgrove, May 11, 2012)](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/net-smart-how-to-thrive-online-by-howard-rheingold-and-talking-back-to-facebook-the-common-sense-guide-to-raising-kids-in-the-digital-age-by-james-p-steyer/2012/05/11/gIQALiLuIU_story.html) (opening only). - Interviews and talks: [Nieman Lab](https://www.niemanlab.org/2012/05/howard-rheingold-on-how-the-five-web-literacies-are-becoming-essential-survival-skills/); [MIT Media Lab MLTalks](https://www.media.mit.edu/videos/rheingold-2012-05-10/); [Henry Jenkins, part one](https://henryjenkins.org/blog/2012/08/how-did-howard-rheingold-get-so-net-smart-an-interview-part-one.html), [two](https://henryjenkins.org/blog/2012/08/how-did-howard-rheingold-get-so-net-smart-an-interview-part-two.html), [three](https://henryjenkins.org/blog/2012/08/how-did-howard-rheingold-get-so-net-smart-an-interview-part-three.html); [Talks at Google](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vajSK1jV56A). - Author: [rheingold.com/howard](https://www.rheingold.com/howard); [Wikipedia, Howard Rheingold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Rheingold).