Authors: Anne Truitt Zelenka.
Paperback, 294 pages
Publisher: Wiley
Publication Date: 2008-01-03


Reviews :

    If you use the web to reach out beyond the confines of your office, cubicle, or home to connect and collaborate with others doing the same thing, you’re a web worker. In this book you'll learn how to use new web tools, discover sites and services you might want to try, and meet the social web where people are as important as corporations. You’ll learn how people are working in new ways because of the web, and how you can too....

Authors: Steve Talbott.
Hardcover, 281 pages
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Publication Date: 2007-04-27
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    "Self-forgetfulness is the reigning temptation of the technological era. This is why we so readily give our assent to the absurd proposition that a computer can add two plus two, despite the obvious fact that it can do nothing of the sort--not if we have in mind anything remotely resembling what we do when we add numbers. In the computer's case, the mechanics of addition involve no motivation, no consciousness of the task, no mobilization of the will, no metabolic activity, no imagination. And its performance brings neither the satisfaction of accomplishment nor the strengthening of practical skills and cognitive capacities."

In this insightful book, author Steve Talbott, software programmer and technical writer turned researcher and editor for The Nature Institute, challenges us to step back and take an objective look at the technology driving our lives. At a time when 65 percent of American consumers spend more time with their PCs than they do with their significant others, according to a recent study, Talbott illustrates that we're forgetting one important thing--our Selves, the human spirit from which technology stems.

Whether we're surrendering intimate details to yet another database, eschewing our physical communities for online social networks, or calculating our net worth, we freely give our power over to technology until, he says, "we arrive at a computer's-eye view of the entire world of industry, commerce, and society at large...an ever more closely woven web of programmed logic."

Digital technology certainly makes us more efficient. But when efficiency is the only goal, we have no way to know whether we're going in the right or wrong direction. Businesses replace guiding vision with a spreadsheet's bottom line. Schoolteachers are replaced by the computer's dataflow. Indigenous peoples give up traditional skills for the dazzle and ease of new gadgets. Even the Pentagon's zeal to replace "boots on the ground" with technology has led to the mess in Iraq. And on it goes.

The ultimate danger is that, in our willingness to adapt ourselves to technology, "we will descend to the level of the computational devices we have engineered--not merely imagining ever new and more sophisticated automatons, but reducing ourselves to automatons."

To transform our situation, we need to see it in a new and unaccustomed light, and that's what Talbott provides by examining the deceiving virtues of technology--how we're killing education, socializing our machines, and mechanizing our society. Once you take this eye-opening journey, you will think more clearly about how you consume technology and how you allow it to consume you.

"Nothing is as rare or sorely needed in our tech-enchanted culture right now as intelligent criticism of technology, and Steve Talbott is exactly the critic we've been waiting for: trenchant, sophisticated, and completely original. Devices of the Soul is an urgent and important book."

--Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and The Botany of Desire: A Plant's Eye View of the World

"Steve Talbott is a rare voice of clarity, humanity, and passion in a world enthralled by machines and calculation. His new book, Devices of the Soul, lays out a frightening and at the same time inspiring analysis of what computers and computer-like thinking are doing to us, our children, and the future of our planet. Talbott is no Luddite. He fully understands and appreciates the stunning power of technology for both good and evil. His cool and precise skewering of the fuzzy thinking and mindless enthusiasm of the technology true believers is tempered by his modesty, the elegance of his writing, and his abiding love for the world of nature and our capacity for communion with it. "

--Edward Miller, Former editor, Harvard Education Letter

"Those who care about the healthy and wholesome lives of children can gain much from Steve Talbott's wisdom. He examines the need to help children spend more time touching nature and real life and less touching keyboards. He eloquently questions the assumption that speeding up learning is a good thing. Is, after all, a sped-up life a well-lived life? Most importantly, he reminds all of us that technology is just one part of life and ought not to overshadow the life of self and soul."

--Joan Almon, Coordinator, Alliance for Childhood

"One of the most original and provocative writers of our time, Steve Talbott offers a rich assortment of insightful reflections on the nature of our humanity, challenging our own thinking and conventional wisdom about advances in technology."

--Dorothy E. Denning, Department of Defense Analysis, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA

"Are you experiencing growing unease as computational metaphors have seized our discourse? Steve Talbott offers immediate relief. You are not losing your mind! Chapter after chapter, he shows how to draw on the powers of technology without losing your soul or breaking your heart."

--Peter Denning, Past President of ACM, Monterey, California

"Steve Talbott is a rare writer whose words can alter one's entire perception of the world. He is our most original and perceptive defender of the wholeness of life against the onslaught of mechanism. Devices of the Soul is written with Talbott's typical grace and clarity. It displays a quality hardly found anymore in our high tech culture--wisdom. "

--Lowell Monke, Associate Professor of Education, Wittenberg University...

Authors: Joey F. George.
Hardcover, 496 pages
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Publication Date: 2003-07-13


Reviews :

   

This book focuses around the social and ethic issues that companies face everyday in doing business. It is a collection of 37 articles from experts in the social issues of computing, exploring the most pressing issues in information technology today. The chapters are fresh, informative, timely, and authoritative. The readings cover such themes as views of computing, the information society, computers and organizations, computer-based monitoring, security and reliability, and privacy, ethics, and the internet. A book from a leading author in the IT field, this collection of articles is an excellent resource for computer-based business owners, managers, and employees. Its excellent section on the Internet makes this a must-read for owners/managers of Internet-based businesses.

...

Authors: Howard Rheingold.
Paperback, 360 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press
Publication Date: 2000-11-01
Edition: Rev Sub

Reviews :

    Howard Rheingold has been called the First Citizen of the Internet. In this book he tours the "virtual community" of online networking. He describes a community that is as real and as much a mixed bag as any physical community -- one where people talk, argue, seek information, organize politically, fall in love, and dupe others. At the same time that he tells moving stories about people who have received online emotional support during devastating illnesses, he acknowledges a darker side to people's behavior in cyberspace. Indeed, contends Rheingold, people relate to each other online much the same as they do in physical communities. Originally published in 1993, The Virtual Community is more timely than ever. This edition contains a new chapter, in which the author revisits his ideas about online social communication now that so much more of the world's population is wired. It also contains an extended bibliography....

    Cyberculture authority Howard Rheingold was the first to write about online communities in this style that is part-travelogue and part-anthropological guide. This groundbreaking classic explores the entire virtual community, beginning with a selective but probing look at the author's original online home, The Well. Rheingold relates plenty of anecdotes that demonstrate the upsides of online life, such as how he was able to get information on removing a tick from his child before his doctor could respond to his phone call. But the bulk of the material relates to how individuals interact online much as they do in a face-to-face community.

Rheingold speaks to how both friendships and enmities are formed online and how people come together to support each other through misfortune. He gives the example of how computer-moderated communication enabled members of one Well community to send vital medical aid to a friend hospitalized halfway around the world. Rheingold goes on to show how communities can form by various electronic communication methods, using the conferencing system of The Well as one example. He also examines how people interact through mailing lists, live chat, and the fantasy cyberenvironments of online role-playing games. In the process, he questions what kind of relationships can really be formed in a medium where people can change their apparent identity at will.

This book questions whether a distinction between "virtual" communities and "real-life" communities is entirely valid. The Virtual Community argues that real relationships happen and real communities develop when people communicate upon virtual common ground. Rheingold also shares his far-reaching knowledge of how technology effects our social constructs. If you are involved in an online community, here is your cultural heritage....

Authors: HUBERT DREYFUS.
Paperback, 136 pages
Publisher: Routledge
Publication Date: 2001-05-18
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    On the Internet is a sharp and stimulating discussion of the promises of the internet. Going beyond the hype of the cybercrowd, Dreyfus, a celebrated writer on philosophy and technology, asks whether the internet can really bring humanity to a new level of community and solve the problems of mass education. Drawing on a diverse array of thinkers from Plato to Kierkegaard, On the Internet is one of the first books to bring philosophical insight to the debate on how far the internet can and cannot take us. In discussing recent studies on the isolation experienced by many internet users, Dreyfus shows how the internet's privatization of experience ignores essential human capacities such as trust, moods, risk, shared local concerns and commitment....

Authors: Joe Trippi.
Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Publication Date: 2005-07-01


Reviews :

   

When Joe Trippi signed on to run Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign, the long–shot candidate had 432 known supporters and $100,000 in the bank. Within a year, Trippi and his team had transformed the most obscure candidate in the field into a Democratic front–runner with a groundswell of 640,000 supporters and more money than any Democrat in history –– mostly through donations of one hundred dollars or less. Trippi's revolutionary use of the Internet and an impassioned, contagious desire to overthrow politics as usual grew into a national grassroots movement and changed the face of politics forever.

As Trippi argues persuasively, the Internet is distributing power to the people right now. And the companies that understand the coming revolution will be the first movers in this new era, while those that wait will be left behind. From his behind–the–scenes look at Dean's shocking rise and fall to his "seven inviolable, irrefutable, ingenious things your business or institution or candidate can do in the age of the Internet that might keep you from getting your ass kicked, but then again might not," Joe Trippi offers an inspiring glimpse of the world we are becoming. And he shows how power, in the hands of all of us, changes everything.

...

Authors: Jill Walker Rettberg.
Paperback, 184 pages
Publisher: Polity
Publication Date: 2008-08-11


Reviews :

    Blogging has profoundly influenced not only the nature of the internet today, but also the nature of modern communication, despite being a genre invented less than a decade ago. This book-length study of a now everyday phenomenon provides a close look at blogging while placing it in a historical, theoretical and contemporary context.

Scholars, students and bloggers will find a lively survey of blogging that contextualises blogs in terms of critical theory and the history of digital media. Authored by a scholar-blogger, the book is packed with examples that show how blogging and related genres are changing media and communication. It gives definitions and explains how blogs work, shows how blogs relate to the historical development of publishing and communication and looks at the ways blogs structure social networks and at how social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook incorporate blogging in their design. Specific kinds of blogs discussed include political blogs, citizen journalism, confessional blogs and commercial blogs....

Authors: Rob Kitchin. Martin Dodge.
Hardcover, 288 pages
Publisher: Pearson Education
Publication Date: 2002-01-15
Edition: 1st

Reviews :

    What does cyberspace 'look' like? The Atlas of Cyberspace is the first book to explore the spatial and visual nature of cyberspace and its infrastructure. It examines in accessible style why cyberspace is being mapped and the new cartographic and visualisation techniques being employed. The Atlas is broad in scope, concentrating on the many different aspects of cyberspace such as the Web, chat, email, virtual worlds, and the telecommunications infrastructure that supports cyberspace. It is fully illustrated with over 300 full colour images. Cartographers have been creating maps for centuries. In recent years they have turned their attention to a new realm, cyberspace. For the first time a comprehensive selection of these maps have been collated into one source. Written in layperson's terms and fully illustrated, the 'Atlas of Cyberspace' catalogues thirty year's worth of maps to reveal the rich and varied landscapes of cyberspace, a landscape occupied by half a billion users and sustaining the information economy. Several different types of maps are detailed.First, a review of maps of the Internet infrastructure showing where the computers are located, how the networks interconnect them and the traffic that flows between them. The book then takes a look at maps of the World-Wide Web, showing how the hyperlink structures and contents of websites are mapped to provide informational landscapes. Next, comes an examination of the ways social interactions between people, using email, chat, bulletin boards, virtual worlds, and games, can be mapped. It concludes with a discussion of the ways in which artists and writers are imagining the visual structure of cyberspace....

    We don't normally consider maps contentious, but the Atlas of Cyberspace makes us think otherwise. Information cartographers Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin show off a wide range of possibilities in representing the vast realms of data existing on and supporting the Internet. Since so many of these models were created to display never-before-charted territories, the book is largely devoted to analyzing their accuracy, ease of development and use, potential for abuse, and other qualities.

Chapters cover infrastructural elements, the Web, communities, and creative renderings of cyberspace, and contain both compelling images and thought-provoking texts. Though it ends up feeling more like a catalog of visual display methods than a reference book detailing virtual geography, its examples still inform and startle the viewer with unexpected transformations of data into understanding, and, occasionally, art. --Rob Lightner...

Authors: Clay Spinuzzi.
Hardcover, 258 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press
Publication Date: 2003-10-01


Reviews :

    In Tracing Genres through Organizations, Clay Spinuzzi examines the everyday improvisations by workers who deal with designed information and shows how understanding this impromptu creation can improve information design. He argues that the traditional user-centered approach to design does not take into consideration the unofficial genres that spring up as workers write notes, jot down ideas, and read aloud from an officially designed text. These often ephemeral innovations in information design are vital components in a genre ecology (the complex of artifacts mediating a given activity). When these innovations are recognized for what they are, they can be traced and their evolution as solutions to recurrent design problems can be studied. Spinuzzi proposes a sociocultural method for studying these improvised innovations that draws on genre theory (which provides the unit of analysis, the genre) and activity theory (which provides a theory of mediation and a way to study the different levels of activity in an organization). After defining terms and describing the method of genre tracing, the book shows the methodology at work in four interrelated studies of traffic workers in Iowa and their use of a database of traffic accidents. These workers developed an ingenious array of ad hoc innovations to make the database better serve their needs. Spinuzzi argues that these inspired improvisations by workers can tell us a great deal about how designed information fails or succeeds in meeting workers' needs. He concludes by considering how the insights reached in studying genre innovation can guide information design itself....

Authors: Espen J. Aarseth.
Paperback, 216 pages
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication Date: 1997-08-06


Reviews :

    Do the rapidly expanding genres of digital literature mean that the narrative mode--novels, films, television drama--is losing its dominant position in our culture? Author Espen Aarseth eases our fears of literary loss (at least temporarily) by pointing out that electronic text requires an interactive response to generate a literary sequence. Where's the fun if you have to write your own ending? 21 illustrations....