Authors: Chris DiBona. Mark Stone. Danese Cooper.
Paperback, 488 pages
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Publication Date: 2005-10-21


Reviews :

    "Open Sources 2.0" is a collection of insightful and thought-provoking essays from today's technology leaders that continues painting the evolutionary picture that developed in the 1999 book "Open Sources: Voices from the Revolution" .

These essays explore open source's impact on the software industry and reveal how open source concepts are infiltrating other areas of commerce and society. The essays appeal to a broad audience: the software developer will find thoughtful reflections on practices and methodology from leading open source developers like Jeremy Allison and Ben Laurie, while the business executive will find analyses of business strategies from the likes of Sleepycat co-founder and CEO Michael Olson and Open Source Business Conference founder Matt Asay.

From China, Europe, India, and Brazil we get essays that describe the developing world's efforts to join the technology forefront and use open source to take control of its high tech destiny. For anyone with a strong interest in technology trends, these essays are a must-read.

The enduring significance of open source goes well beyond high technology, however. At the heart of the new paradigm is network-enabled distributed collaboration: the growing impact of this model on all forms of online collaboration is fundamentally challenging our modern notion of community.

What does the future hold? Veteran open source commentators Tim O'Reilly and Doc Searls offer their perspectives, as do leading open source scholars Steven Weber and Sonali Shah. Andrew Hessel traces the migration of open source ideas from computer technology to biotechnology, and Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger and Slashdotco-founder Jeff Bates provide frontline views of functioning, flourishing online collaborative communities.

The power of collaboration, enabled by the internet and open source software, is changing the world in ways we can only begin to imagine."Open Sources 2.0" further develops the evolutionary picture that emerged in the original "Open Sources" and expounds on the transformative open source philosophy.

"This is a wonderful collection of thoughts and examples by

great minds from the free software movement, and is a must have for

anyone who follows free software development and project histories."

--Robin Monks, Free Software Magazine

"The list of contributors include"

Alolita Sharma

Andrew Hessel

Ben Laurie

Boon-Lock Yeo

Bruno Souza

Chris DiBona

Danese Cooper

Doc Searls

Eugene Kim

Gregorio Robles

Ian Murdock

Jeff Bates

Jeremy Allison

Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona

Kim Polese

Larry Sanger

Louisa Liu

Mark Stone

Mark Stone

Matthew N. Asay

Michael Olson

Mitchell Baker

Pamela Jones

Robert Adkins

Russ Nelson

Sonali K. Shah

Stephen R. Walli

Steven Weber

Sunil Saxena

Tim O'Reilly

Wendy Seltzer

...

Authors: George P. Landow.
Paperback, 456 pages
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication Date: 2006-01-03
Edition: 3rd

Reviews :

   

George Landow's widely acclaimed Hypertext was the first book to bring together the worlds of literary theory and computer technology. Landow was one of the first scholars to explore the implications of giving readers instant, easy access to a virtual library of sources as well as unprecedented control of what and how they read. In hypermedia, Landow saw a strikingly literal embodiment of many major points of contemporary literary theory, particularly Derrida's idea of "de-centering" and Barthes's conception of the "readerly" versus "writerly" text.

From Intermedia to Microcosm, Storyspace, and the World Wide Web, Landow offers specific information about the kinds of hypertext, different modes of linking, attitudes toward technology, and the proliferation of pornography and gambling on the Internet. For the third edition he includes new material on developing Internet-related technologies, considering in particular their increasingly global reach and the social and political implications of this trend as viewed from a postcolonial perspective. He also discusses blogs, interactive film, and the relation of hypermedia to games. Thoroughly expanded and updated, this pioneering work continues to be the "ur-text" of hypertext studies.

...

Authors: Matthew L. Helm. April Leigh Helm.
Paperback, 384 pages
Publisher: For Dummies
Publication Date: 1999-12-30
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    Do you rummage through your grandmother's attic for pictures of old relatives? Have you ever wondered where your family came from? Would you like to know if you and someone famous share a common great-great grandparent? If you've answered yes to any of these questions you might be an amateur genealogist without even knowing it!

Genealogical programs like Family Tree Maker are widely available and do not require any special training to use. That's right -- with a PC, a computer program, and an interest in discovering your roots you can begin tracing your family's history from its early years to today. Along the way you just might visit exotic lands, meet famous relatives, or dabble in a foreign language!

Family Tree Maker For Dummies is your guide to getting the most out of today's most popular genealogy software on the market. Begin by investigating the many features Family Tree Maker offers all budding genealogists. Find out what you need to get underway and how to start recording data you have collected. The book helps you create an investigation strategy that taps into close (and distant) relatives, high-tech resources, and other genealogists from around the world! You can also explore options for presenting your completed family tree, from including photos and video in the final product to making copies for relatives. Family Tree Maker For Dummies makes preserving vital family records a fun and rewarding experience....

Authors: Martin Davis.
Hardcover, 256 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Publication Date: 2000-10


Reviews :

    One of the world's pioneers in the development of computer science offers a mesmerizing history of computers. Computers are everywhere today--at work, in the bank, in artist's studios, sometimes even in our pockets--yet they remain to many of us objects of irreducible mystery. How can today's computers perform such a bewildering variety of tasks if computing is just glorified arithmetic? The answer, as Martin Davis lucidly illustrates, lies in the fact that computers are essentially engines of logic. Their hardware and software embody concepts developed over centuries by logicians such as Leibniz, Boole, and Godel, culminating in the amazing insights of Alan Turing. The Universal Computer traces the development of these concepts by exploring with captivating detail the lives and work of the geniuses who first formulated them. Readers will come away with a revelatory understanding of how and why computers work and how the algorithms within them came to be....

    Computers rely on such things as semiconductors, memory chips, and electricity. But they also rely on a hard-won body of scientific knowledge that has enabled the now-ubiquitous devices to perform complex calculations, multitask, and even play a game of solitaire.

Martin Davis, a fluent interpreter of mathematics and philosophy, locates the source of this knowledge in the work of the remarkable German thinker G. W. Leibniz, who, among other accomplishments, was a distinguished jurist, mining engineer, and diplomat but found time to invent a contraption called the "Leibniz wheel," a sort of calculator that could carry out the four basic operations of arithmetic. Leibniz subsequently developed a method of calculation called the calculus raciocinator, an innovation his successor George Boole extended by, in Davis's words, "turning logic into algebra." (Boole emerges as a deeply sympathetic character in Davis's pages, rather than as the dry-as-dust figure of other histories. He explained, Davis reports, that he had turned to mathematics because he had so little money as a student to buy books, and mathematics books provided more value for the money because they took so long to work through.) Davis traces the development of this logic, essential to the advent of "thinking machines," through the workshops and studies of such thinkers as Georg Cantor, Kurt Gödel, and Alan Turing, each of whom puzzled out just a little bit more of the workings of the world--and who, in the bargain, made the present possible. --Gregory McNamee ...

Authors: Stephen Johnson.
Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Publication Date: 2006-08-01


Reviews :

   

"We are in the Stone Age of digital photography. We've figured out how to make some tools, but it is just now beginning to dawn on us what we might do with them. I've often been frustrated at the concentration on the technical aspect of digital photography with so little discussion of the aesthetics and heart behind the image making. This book is essentially a distillation of what I've been teaching over the last 25 years."

Master photographer Stephen Johnson has been taking beautiful landscape photography for decades, and teaching others the practical art of image making since 1977. While he started out with traditional film camera techniques, Johnson is widely recognized among his peers as a pioneer of digital photography. Stephen Johnson on Digital Photography chronicles his ride on the bleeding edge of this medium's evolution, and provides a practical in-depth introduction to digital photography that offers the latest techniques for beginning and experienced photographers alike.

What sets this guide apart from other books on the topic is its approach and execution: This isn't a Photoshop book, although Photoshop has its place within the book; it's a book that a master teacher and photographer creates after a lifetime of showing others how to understand and make great photography. With 5 color photographs throughout, including black/gray duotones, and 715 illustrations reproduced with a 200 line screen, Johnson's book covers everything from:

The basics of digital photography

Film camera techniques vs. digital

Practical approaches of the filmless photographer

Techniques of the digital darkroom

A photographer ™s digital journey

Photography, art and the future

This is a holistic work (and method for teaching) that embraces the state of photographic tools and techniques, blended with suggestions and experiences on why I make photographs, Johnson says. At its best, photography rides that crest where technology and art intersect. But the deepest engagement that photography can bring remains its ability to capture and hold a moment before the lens. In this age of digital manipulation, that fundamental fact must be remembered.

...

Authors: Steven Levy.
Paperback, 368 pages
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Publication Date: 2002-01-15
Edition: 1st

Reviews :

    If you've ever made a secure purchase with your credit card over the Internet, then you have seen cryptography, or "crypto," in action. From Steven Levy-the author who made "hackers" a household word-comes this account of a revolution that is already affecting every citizen in the twenty-first century. Crypto tells the inside story of how a group of "crypto rebels"-nerds and visionaries turned freedom fighters-teamed up with corporate interests to beat Big Brother and ensure our privacy on the Internet. Levy's history of one of the most controversial and important topics of the digital age reads like the best futuristic fiction.

"Gripping and illuminating." (The Wall Street Journal)...

    If the National Security Agency (NSA) had wanted to make sure that strong encryption would reach the masses, it couldn't have done much better than to tell the cranky geniuses of the world not to do it. Author Steven Levy, deservedly famous for his enlightening Hackers, tells the story of the cypherpunks, their foes, and their allies in Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government. From the determined research of Whitfield Diffie and Marty Hellman, in the face of the NSA's decades-old security lock, to the commercial world's turn-of-the-century embrace of encrypted e-commerce, Levy finds drama and intellectual challenge everywhere he looks. Although he writes, "Behind every great cryptographer, it seems, there is a driving pathology," his respect for the mathematicians and programmers who spearheaded public key encryption as the solution to Information Age privacy invasion shines throughout. Even the governmental bad guys are presented more as hapless control fetishists who lack the prescience to see the inevitability of strong encryption as more than a conspiracy of evil.

Each cryptological advance that was made outside the confines of the NSA's Fort Meade complex was met with increasing legislative and judicial resistance. Levy's storytelling acumen tugs the reader along through mathematical and legal hassles that would stop most narratives in their tracks--his words make even the depressingly silly Clipper chip fiasco vibrant. Hardcore privacy nerds will value Crypto as a review of 30 years of wrangling; those readers with less familiarity with the subject will find it a terrific and well-documented launching pad for further research. From notables like Phil Zimmerman to obscure but important figures like James Ellis, Crypto dishes the dirt on folks who know how to keep a secret. --Rob Lightner...

Authors: David Berlinski.
Paperback, 368 pages
Publisher: Harvest Books
Publication Date: 2001-05-03


Reviews :

    ...

    Francis Sullivan of the Institute for Defense Analysis said "Great algorithms are the poetry of computation"; David Berlinski calls the algorithm "the idea that rules the world." The Advent of the Algorithm is not so much a history of algorithms as a historical fantasia. Berlinski spins freely between semifictional accounts of historical figures, personal reminiscence, and mathematical proofs--without ever really defining an algorithm in so many words.

This is not the book for those who were maddened by Berlinski's A Tour of the Calculus; his style remains quirky, digressive, self-referential, and dense:

And then, by some inscrutable incandescent insight, Leibniz came to see that what is crucial in what he had written is the alternation between God and Nothingness. And for this, the numbers 0 and 1 suffice.

Twinkies and Diet Coke in hand, computer programmers can now be observed pausing thoughtfully at their consoles.

Berlinski's argument seems to be that algorithms--step-by-step procedures for getting answers--superceded logic, and will be superceded in turn by more biological, empirical, fuzzy methods. The structure of the book reflects this argument--sketches of people like Leibniz, Hilbert, Gödel, and Turing are interwoven with proofs and with characters of Berlinski's own invention. Berlinski's voice, closer to Hofstadter than to Knuth, remains unique. --Mary Ellen Curtin ...

Authors: Dennis Shasha. Cathy Lazere.
Paperback, 291 pages
Publisher: Springer
Publication Date: 1998-07-02


Reviews :

    Imagine living during the Renaissance and being able to interview that era's greatest scientists about their inspirations, discoveries, and personal interests. The latter half of our century has seen its own Renaissance--informations technology has changed irrevocable the way we live, work, and think about the world. We are fortunate, therefore, that the authors of Out of Their Minds have been able to talk so candidly with the founders of computer science.......

    Over the past fifty years, most of computer science's important inventions have come from innovators who aren't exactly household names. Out of Their Minds describes the lives and discoveries of fifteen unsung computer scientists whose programs have done everything from help engineers manage factories to help cartoonists animate their characters. This well-paced book spans the varied disciplines of computer science and challenges the reader to think about still-unsolved questions: how can we build a computer that works like the human brain, how can we boost the speed of computation, and where all that intelligence and power will take the industry over the next fifty years. ...

Authors: Alexander R. Galloway.
Paperback, 286 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press
Publication Date: 2006-04-01


Reviews :

    Is the Internet a vast arena of unrestricted communication and freely exchanged information or a regulated, highly structured virtual bureaucracy? In Protocol, Alexander Galloway argues that the founding principle of the Net is control, not freedom, and that the controlling power lies in the technical protocols that make network connections (and disconnections) possible. He does this by treating the computer as a textual medium that is based on a technological language, code. Code, he argues, can be subject to the same kind of cultural and literary analysis as any natural language; computer languages have their own syntax, grammar, communities, and cultures. Instead of relying on established theoretical approaches, Galloway finds a new way to write about digital media, drawing on his backgrounds in computer programming and critical theory. "Discipline-hopping is a necessity when it comes to complicated socio-technical topics like protocol," he writes in the preface.

Galloway begins by examining the types of protocols that exist, including TCP/IP, DNS, and HTML. He then looks at examples of resistance and subversion—hackers, viruses, cyberfeminism, Internet art—which he views as emblematic of the larger transformations now taking place within digital culture. Written for a nontechnical audience, Protocol serves as a necessary counterpoint to the wildly utopian visions of the Net that were so widespread in earlier days....

Authors: Joseph S. Nye.
Paperback, 240 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Publication Date: 2003-05-01
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    Not since the Roman Empire has any nation had as much economic, cultural, and military power as the United States does today. Yet, as has become all too evident through the terrorist attacks of September 11th and the impending threat of the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran, that power is not enough to solve global problems--like terrorism, environmental degradation, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction--without involving other nations. Here Joseph S. Nye, Jr. focuses on the rise of these and other new challenges and explains clearly why America must adopt a more cooperative engagement with the rest of the world....