Over four themed episodes that criss-cross the globe, journalist and academic Dr Aleks Krotoski explores the meaning of a phenomenon that is transforming everything from how we learn to how we shop, vote and make friends.

From a unique data sample of British users, the series reveals astonishing facts about how how the web is rewiring our society, economy and even our brains.
Together we spend 27 billion hours a month online. 18 million of us now read or write blogs every month, while 5 million of us look for love on dating websites.

The series brings together everyone who's anyone on the web - from its inventor Tim Berners-Lee to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales to Amazon's Jeff Bezos.

Through stories of how the web is being used and abused today, Aleks Krotoski uncovers the hidden costs of the web's culture of global, instant and free information. With what's claimed to be as much as £120 billion worth of files being downloaded illegally by Britons each year, Aleks explores how the web is undermining the business model of the entire information economy.

As Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak puts it, "Our computer technology lets us copy everything instantly… it's very scary."
Andrew Keen warns, "For the first time in human history, we've created something without a centre, it can't be controlled."
But Lee Seigel argues, "Like all technology, the internet is not a cure for human nature, it's an amplification of human nature… the good and the bad."

And, with only a quarter of the planet yet connected, Aleks asks what lies ahead as the remaining 75% of the world’s population comes online. 'The web has created unimaginable wealth yet encouraged millions to work for nothing, it's spread democracy and challenged authority yet allowed regimes to spy and censor as never before, and it's been blamed for creating a generation of web addicts yet opened up new realms of knowledge'.