I love reading these early attempts at figuring out the internet. Such a wild unexplored ground and people really went...everywhere...with it.

First published at the turn of the millennium, The Psychology of the Internet is an attempt to understand online life before the infiltration of corporate agendas. 

Drawing on cognitive and social psychology, Wallace examines anonymity, identity play, group behaviour, aggression, intimacy, and the reshaping of attention in networked environments that were still largely text-based and decentralised.

Many of its concerns—disinhibition, parasociality, online communities as social laboratories—remain structurally relevant, even as the technical context has shifted. A useful reference for readers interested in the pre-platform internet, early cyberculture studies, and the psychological assumptions that still underpin contemporary digital theory.

Edition note: Cambridge University Press paperback. First published 1999; this copy is from the early 2000s paperback printing.