Authors: Nicholas Negroponte.
Hardcover, 256 pages
Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: 1995-01-31
Edition: 1st

Reviews :

    In lively, mordantly witty prose, Negroponte decodes the mysteries--and debunks the hype--surrounding bandwidth, multimedia, virtual reality, and the Internet, and explains why such touted innovations as the fax and the CD-ROM are likely to go the way of the BetaMax. "Succinct and readable. . . . If you suffer from digital anxiety . . . here is a book that lays it all out for you."--Newsday.


From the Trade Paperback edition....

    As the founder of MIT's Media Lab and a popular columnist for Wired, Nicholas Negroponte has amassed a following of dedicated readers. Negroponte's fans will want to get a copy of Being Digital, which is an edited version of the 18 articles he wrote for Wired about "being digital."

Negroponte's text is mostly a history of media technology rather than a set of predictions for future technologies. In the beginning, he describes the evolution of CD-ROMs, multimedia, hypermedia, HDTV (high-definition television), and more. The section on interfaces is informative, offering an up-to-date history on visual interfaces, graphics, virtual reality (VR), holograms, teleconferencing hardware, the mouse and touch-sensitive interfaces, and speech recognition.

In the last chapter and the epilogue, Negroponte offers visionary insight on what "being digital" means for our future. Negroponte praises computers for their educational value but recognizes certain dangers of technological advances, such as increased software and data piracy and huge shifts in our job market that will require workers to transfer their skills to the digital medium. Overall, Being Digital provides an informative history of the rise of technology and some interesting predictions for its future....

Authors: W. David Kingery.
Paperback, 262 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press
Publication Date: 1998-02-17

Authors: Lewis Mumford.
Paperback, 178 pages
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication Date: 2000-05-15


Reviews :

   

Featuring a new introduction by Casey Nelson Blake, this classic text provides the essence of Mumford's views on the distinct yet interpenetrating roles of technology and the arts in modern culture. Mumford contends that modern man's overemphasis on technics has contributed to the depersonalization and emptiness of much of twentieth-century life. He issues a call for a renewed respect for artistic impulses and achievements. His repeated insistence that technological development take the Human as its measure -- as well as his impassioned plea for humanity to make the most of its "splendid potentialities and promise" and reverse its progress toward anomie and destruction -- is ever more relevant as the new century dawns.

...

Authors:
Hardcover, 318 pages
Publisher: Wiley
Publication Date: 1998-03-13


Reviews :

    This book discusses a holistic approach to organizations. It explores alternative organizational forms and work practices, the use and availability of information systems, evolving skill requirements, the innovative power of information technology, the creation of knowledge, and the reshaping of industrial sectors. Presents forward-looking, exciting topics. Breaks the boundaries of functionally-based, overly deterministic information literature....

Authors: Paul Virilio.
Paperback, 227 pages
Publisher: Continuum
Publication Date: 2006-11-30


Reviews :

    "Negative Horizon" is Paul Virilio's most original and unified exploration of the key themes and ideas running through his work and thought. Provocatively and forcefully written, it sets out Virilio's theory of dromoscopy: a means of apprehending speed and its pivotal - and potentially destructive - role in contemporary global society. Applying this theory to Western political and military history, Virilio exposes a compulsion to accelerate, and the rise of a politics of time - encapsulated in the importance accorded to speed - over territorial politics of space. Moving through human history from the cave paintings at Lascaux that depict the first hunters, through the domestication of animals and the building of the first roads, to the 'stealth technologies' deployed in contemporary warfare, Virilio shows how resistance to speed and movement has consistently been eroded, and the physical world adapted, in order to satisfy the urge to move further and faster. In exposing what he believes to be the consequences of this constant acceleration for human sensory perception and, ultimately, global democracy, Virilio offers a vision of history and politics as disturbing as it is original. This new translation by Michael Degener makes available in English for the first time, one of Virilio's seminal works - set to be required reading for anyone interested in the rise of new technologies and the direction of global politics....

Authors: Committee on Information Technology Research in a Competitive World. Computer Science and Telecommunications Board. National Research Council. Committee on Information Technology Research in a Competitive World. National Research Council.
Paperback, 248 pages
Publisher: National Academies Press
Publication Date: 2000-01-15
Edition: 1st

Reviews :

    This new book highlights the fundamental importance of research to ensure that I.T. meets society's expanding needs. Against the background of dramatic change in the I.T. landscape, the committee examines four key questions:

* Is the scope of I.T. research broad enough-particularly in the arena of large-scale systems-to address government, business, and social applications?
* Are government and industrial sponsors providing sufficient funding for I.T. research?
* Is the research net big both big and diverse enough to capture sufficient financial and intellectual resources to advance the field?
* Are structures and mechanisms for funding and conducting research suited to the new sets of research challenges?...

Authors:
Paperback, 889 pages
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Date: 1996-05-31


Reviews :

    This comprehensive volume provides a roadmap for disentangling the sometimes divisive public debate about the consequences of climate change. It reviews what is known, unknown, uncertain and controversial about the potential impacts of climate change. The conclusions of the report include that some regions, especially in the tropics and subtropics, may suffer significant adverse consequences for food security, even though the effects of climate change on global food production may prove small to moderate; there could be an increase in a wide range of human diseases, including mortality; some countries will face threats to sustainable development from losses of human habitat; and although technological advances have increased the range of adaptation and mitigation options, they are not currently available in all regions of the world. This comprehensive volume will be of great value to decision-makers and the scientific community concerned with the impacts of climate change and society's response. Students across a broad range of the environmental sciences will find this to be the most comprehensive and up-to-date information available on these topics....

Authors: David Shenk.
Hardcover, 161 pages
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Publication Date: 1999-09


Reviews :

    "Information overload" is a simple phrase for a complex phenomenon: the overwhelming sense that modern media technologies churn out more words and images than our culture can usefully absorb. David Shenk, a technology critic with a knack for unraveling the complex, has an even simpler name for it--"data smog." That was the title of his first book, a smart, useful critique of the march of info-tech "progress" that has brought us such marvels as spam, junk mail, and 57 channels with nothing much on.

His second book, The End of Patience: Cautionary Notes on the Information Revolution, continues and expands Shenk's analysis, collecting articles and commentary he wrote for National Public Radio, The New Republic, FEED, Wired, and other high-minded venues over the last three years. Shenk's targets here vary widely: the corporatization of scientific research, the dizzying ethical choices surrounding biotechnology, and the scourge of Web sites with too many bells and whistles all get due consideration. But his central message remains the same throughout. Our technologies, he warns, are shaping us into a nation of info-hungry, data-dizzy "button smackers," risking the quality of our life and culture for the doubtful thrill of instant knowledge.

Shenk's warning is a gentle one, however, tempered by an affectionate familiarity with the media he critiques. And though this book could have used a little more winnowing (in particular, the transcribed conversations with assorted media-critic pals of Shenk's come off as little more than chummy, self-indulgent filler), in general his writing has a sure, light touch that glides past the bombast of classic technopunditry. Happily, Shenk follows his own prescriptions, cutting through the information haze rather than adding to it. --Julian Dibbell...

Authors: John, Ikerd.
Paperback, 228 pages
Publisher: R.T. Edwards, Inc.
Publication Date: 2007-03-31


Reviews :

    An intense and engaging story of personal transformation combined with sweeping analysis and a call for societal change based on shared insights of universal principles of humanity - our common sense....

Authors: Yoneji Masuda.
Paperback, 178 pages
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Publication Date: 1980-01-01