Authors: N. Katherine Hayles.
Paperback, 364 pages
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Publication Date: 1999-02-15
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    ...

    The title of this scholarly yet remarkably accessible slice of contemporary cultural history has a whiff of paradox about it: what can it mean, exactly, to say that we humans have become something other than human? The answer, Katherine Hayles explains, lies not in ourselves but in our tools. Ever since the invention of electronic computers five decades ago, these powerful new machines have inspired a shift in how we define ourselves both as individuals and as a species.

Hayles tracks this shift across the history of avant-garde computer theory, starting with Norbert Weiner and other early "cyberneticists," who were the first to systematically explore the similarities between living and computing systems. Hayles's study ends with artificial-life specialists, many of whom no longer even bother to distinguish between life forms and computers. Along the way she shows these thinkers struggling to reconcile their traditional, Western notions of human identity with the unsettling, cyborg directions in which their own work seems to be leading humanity.

This is more than just the story of a geek elite, however. Hayles looks at cybernetically inspired science fiction by the likes of Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, and Neal Stephenson to show how the larger culture grapples with the same issues that dog the technologists. She also draws lucidly on her own broad grasp of contemporary philosophy both to contextualize those issues and to contend with them herself. The result is a fascinating introduction--and a valuable addition--to one of the most important currents in recent intellectual history. --Julian Dibbell...

Authors: Haje Jan Kamps.
Paperback, 253 pages
Publisher: Wiley
Publication Date: 2007-07-02


Reviews :

    Special techniques for creating unique, artistic, close-up images

Macro, or close-up, photography is gaining popularity, and this book covers all of the challenges associated with taking great close-ups: depth of field, focus, and exposure. Copublished with Photoworkshop.com, a leading online educational resource for both beginning and professional photographers, this task-oriented reference allows readers to learn by doing and offers outstanding examples and instructions....

Authors: Jean-Michel, Ph. D. Claverie. Cedric, Ph.D. Notredame.
Paperback, 456 pages
Publisher: For Dummies
Publication Date: 2006-12-18
Edition: 2

Reviews :

    Were you always curious about biology but were afraid to sit through long hours of dense reading? Did you like the subject when you were in high school but had other plans after you graduated? Now you can explore the human genome and analyze DNA without ever leaving your desktop!

Bioinformatics For Dummies is packed with valuable information that introduces you to this exciting new discipline. This easy-to-follow guide leads you step by step through every bioinformatics task that can be done over the Internet. Forget long equations, computer-geek gibberish, and installing bulky programs that slow down your computer. You’ll be amazed at all the things you can accomplish just by logging on and following these trusty directions. You get the tools you need to:

• Analyze all types of sequences
• Use all types of databases
• Work with DNA and protein sequences
• Conduct similarity searches
• Build a multiple sequence alignment
• Edit and publish alignments
• Visualize protein 3-D structures
• Construct phylogenetic trees

This up-to-date second edition includes newly created and popular databases and Internet programs as well as multiple new genomes. It provides tips for using servers and places to seek resources to find out about what’s going on in the bioinformatics world. Bioinformatics For Dummies will show you how to get the most out of your PC and the right Web tools so you’ll be searching databases and analyzing sequences like a pro!...

Authors: Michael Bell.
Hardcover, 384 pages
Publisher: Wiley
Publication Date: 2008-02-25


Reviews :

    Answers to your most pressing SOA development questions

How do we start with service modeling? How do we analyze services for better reusability? Who should be involved? How do we create the best architecture model for our organization? This must-read for all enterprise leaders gives you all the answers and tools needed to develop a sound service-oriented architecture in your organization.

Praise for Service-Oriented Modeling

Service Analysis, Design, and Architecture

"Michael Bell has done it again with a book that will be remembered as a key facilitator of the global shift to Service-Oriented Architecture. . . . With this book, Michael Bell provides that foundation and more-an essential bible for the next generation of enterprise IT."
-Eric Pulier, Executive Chairman, SOA Software

"Michael Bell's insightful book provides common language and techniques for business and technology organizations to take advantage of the SOA paradigm. By focusing modeling techniques on the business problem, Bell provides a way for professionals to work throughout the life cycle to create reusable and enduring services."
-Mike Zbranak, CIO, Chase Card Services

"This book will become an imperative business and technology service-oriented modeling recipe for any manager, architect, modeler, analyst, and developer in today's software development industry."
-Jeff Schneider, CEO, MomentumSI

"'Innovative' and 'groundbreaking' are words that best describe Michael Bell's Service-Oriented Modeling. It depicts a true service modeling approach that elegantly closes a clear and critical service modeling gap in the SOA industry. This holistic book ties these concepts together using real-world examples across a service life cycle that transitions services from ideas and concepts into production assets that deliver business value. A must-read for business and technical SOA practitioners."
-Eric A. Marks, CEO, AgilePath Corporation

"As hot as SOA is today, many business and technology professionals still find it challenging to mind the gap between their disparate methodologies and objectives. Herein Michael Bell speaks clearly to both camps in straightforward language, outlining disciplines each can use to communicate effectively and advance the realization of corporate aims. This book is a bible for all who seek to drive business/technology into the future."
-Mark Edward Goodrich, Director, Investing Product Management, Reuters Media

"This book takes senior IT architects and systems designers into the depths of modeling for SOA, with a fresh new perspective on tools, terminology, and how to turn the theory into practice. His full life-cycle approach balances process, control, and accountability to align all the participants in the delivery pipeline-clearing the road for successful SOA business solutions."
-Phil Gilligan, Chief Technology Officer, EBS...

Authors: Lawrence Lessig.
Paperback, 432 pages
Publisher: Basic Books
Publication Date: 2006-12-04


Reviews :

    ...

Authors: Michael Solomon. Neil Broom. Diane Barrett.
Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Wiley
Publication Date: 2004-12-10


Reviews :

    At the heart of modern corporate crime and counter-terrorism investigations, computer forensics is now the fastest growing segment of IT and law enforcement. For everyone curious about this hot field, here is an in-depth introduction to the technological, social, and political issues at hand. Sybex’s JumpStart approach is ideal for those interested in computer forensics but not yet sure what it’s all about. It offers a complete overview of the basic skills and available certifications that can help to launch a new career....

Authors: John St. Clair.
Paperback, 504 pages
Publisher: Wiley
Publication Date: 2004-05-07


Reviews :

    You can go back, and here's howRemember the days—and quarters—you spent pursuing aliens, fleeing ghosts, and gobbling dots in that beloved arcade? They’re hiding in these pages, along with diagrams, directions, plans, and materials lists that will enable you to build your very own arcade game. Construct joysticks, buttons, and trackballs; build the console and cabinet; install and configure the software; crank up the speakers; and wham! Step across the time-space continuum and enjoy all those classic games, plus dozens of new ones, whenever you like.Start HereIncludes diagrams, detailed instructions, essential software, and more 1. Plan for your space and budget
2. Design and build the cabinet
3. Construct the controllers
4. Build the console
5. Pick an old game’s brain
6. Install the emulator
7. Convince a PC it’s a game
8. Connect a monitor and speakers
9. Add a marquee
10. GO PLAY!CD-ROM Includes
Complete cabinet plans and diagrams
MAME32 software
Paint Shop Pro¿ evaluation version
Links to hundreds of arcade cabinet projects...

Authors: DL Byron. Steve Broback.
Paperback, 200 pages
Publisher: New Riders Press
Publication Date: 2006-06-11


Reviews :

   

While personal blogs take up much of the blogosphere, blogs are quickly gaining popularity in business as an inexpensive and amazingly effective marketing tool. It’s time for a practical book about business blogging: this is the first book to demonstrate how businesses are blogging and how you can use blogging technology to converse with your customers to build your brand and sell your products.

Written from the business person/designer’s perspectives, this book shows how businesses can leverage current, real-world blogging techniques, tools, and platforms to promote and enhance their ventures. The key idea is that the conversation with your market is stronger and more meaningful with a blog. Filled with practical information and a how-to approach, this book provides case studies of companies as large as Boeing or General Motors and as small as Clip-’n-seal. Readers will learn about the types of business blogs, how companies use blogs, how to sell blogs to management and IT, effective blog design, content, and conversation, pitfalls to avoid, how to develop Web presence, and more.

...

Authors: Mark Stephen Meadows.
Paperback, 144 pages
Publisher: New Riders Press
Publication Date: 2008-01-06
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    What is an avatar? Why are there nearly a billion of them, and who is using them? Do avatars impact our real lives, or are they just video game conceits? Is an avatar an inspired rendering of its creator’s inner self, or is it just one among millions of anonymous vehicles clogging the online freeways? Can we use our avatars to really connect with people, or do they just isolate us? And as we become more like our avatars do they become more like us?

In I, Avatar, Mark Stephen Meadows answers some of these questions, but more importantly, he raises hundreds of others in his exploration of avatars and the fascinating possibilities they hold. His examination of  avatars through the lenses of sociology, psychology, politics, history, and art, he will change the way you look at even a simple online profile and revolutionize the idea of avatars as part of our lives, whether first or second.

...

Authors: Hal Abelson. Ken Ledeen. Harry Lewis.
Hardcover, 384 pages
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Publication Date: 2008-06-16
Edition: 1

Reviews :

   

“If you want to understand the future before it happens, you’ll love this book. If you want to change the future before it happens to you, this book is required reading.”

–Reed Hundt, former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission

 

“There is no simpler or clearer statement of the radical change that digital technologies will bring, nor any book that better prepares one for thinking about the next steps.”

–Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law School and Author of Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace

 

“Blown to Bits will blow you away. In highly accessible and always fun prose, it explores all the nooks and crannies of the digital universe, exploring not only how this exploding space works but also what it means.”

–Debora Spar, President of Barnard College, Author of Ruling the Waves and The Baby Business

 

“This is a wonderful book–probably the best since Hal Varian and Carl Schultz wrote Digital Rules. The authors are engineers, not economists. The result is a long, friendly talk with the genie, out of the lamp, and willing to help you avoid making the traditional mistake with that all-important third wish.”

–David Warsh, Author of Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations

 

“Blown to Bits is one of the clearest expositions I’ve seen of the social and political issues arising from the Internet. Its remarkably clear explanations of how the Net actually works lets the hot air out of some seemingly endless debates. You’ve made explaining this stuff look easy. Congratulations!”

–David Weinberger, Coauthor of The Cluetrain Manifesto and Author of Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder.

 

“Blown to Bits is a timely, important, and very readable take on how information is produced and consumed today, and more important, on the approaching sea change in the way that we as a society deal with the consequences.”

–Craig Silverstein, Director of Technology, Google, Inc.

 

“This book gives an overview of the kinds of issues confronting society as we become increasingly dependent on the Internet and the World Wide Web. Every informed citizen should read this book and then form their own opinion on these and related issues. And after reading this book you will rethink how (and even whether) you use the Web to form your opinions…”

–James S. Miller, Senior Director for Technology Policy and Strategy, Microsoft Corporation

 

“Most writing about the digital world comes from techies writing about technical matter for other techies or from pundits whose turn of phrase greatly exceeds their technical knowledge. In Blown to Bits, experts in computer science address authoritatively the practical issues in which we all have keen interest.”

–Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Author of Multiple Intelligences and Changing Minds

 

“Regardless of your experience with computers, Blown to Bits provides a uniquely entertaining and informative perspective from the computing industry’s greatest minds.

A fascinating, insightful and entertaining book that helps you understand computers and their impact on the world in a whole new way.

This is a rare book that explains the impact of the digital explosion in a way that everyone can understand and, at the same time, challenges experts to think in new ways.”

–Anne Margulies, Assistant Secretary for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

 

“Blown to Bits is fun and fundamental. What a pleasure to see real teachers offering such excellent framework for students in a digital age to explore and understand their digital environment, code and law, starting with the insight of Claude Shannon. I look forward to you teaching in an open online school.”

–Professor Charles Nesson, Harvard Law School, Founder, Berkman Center for Internet and Society

 

“To many of us, computers and the Internet are magic. We make stuff, send stuff, receive stuff, and buy stuff. It’s all pointing, clicking, copying, and pasting. But it’s all mysterious. This book explains in clear and comprehensive terms how all this gear on my desk works and why we should pay close attention to these revolutionary changes in our lives. It’s a brilliant and necessary work for consumers, citizens, and students of all ages.”

–Siva Vaidhyanathan, cultural historian and media scholar at the University of Virginia and author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity

 

“The world has turned into the proverbial elephant and we the blind men. The old and the young among us risk being controlled by, rather than in control of, events and technologies. Blown to Bits is a remarkable and essential Rosetta Stone for beginning to figure out how all of the pieces of the new world we have just begun to enter–law, technology, culture, information–are going to fit together. Will life explode with new possibilities, or contract under pressure of new horrors? The precipice is both exhilarating and frightening. Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen, and Harry Lewis, together, have ably managed to describe the elephant. Readers of this compact book describing the beginning stages of a vast human adventure will be one jump ahead, for they will have a framework on which to hang new pieces that will continue to appear with remarkable speed. To say that this is a ‘must read’ sounds trite, but, this time, it’s absolutely true.”

–Harvey Silverglate, criminal defense and civil liberties lawyer and writer

 

Every day, billions of photographs, news stories, songs, X-rays, TV shows, phone calls, and emails are being scattered around the world as sequences of zeroes and ones: bits. We can’t escape this explosion of digital information and few of us want to–the benefits are too seductive. The technology has enabled unprecedented innovation, collaboration, entertainment, and democratic participation.

 

But the same engineering marvels are shattering centuries-old assumptions about privacy, identity, free expression, and personal control as more and more details of our lives are captured as digital data.

 

Can you control who sees all that personal information about you? Can email be truly confidential, when nothing seems to be private? Shouldn’t the Internet be censored the way radio and TV are? Is it really a federal crime to download music? When you use Google or Yahoo! to search for something, how do they decide which sites to show you? Do you still have free speech in the digital world? Do you have a voice in shaping government or corporate policies about any of this?

 

Blown to Bits offers provocative answers to these questions and tells intriguing real-life stories. This book is a wake-up call to the human consequences of the digital explosion.

 

Preface xiii

 

Chapter 1: Digital Explosion: Why Is It Happening, and What Is at Stake? 1

Chapter 2: Naked in the Sunlight: Privacy Lost, Privacy Abandoned 19

Chapter 3: Ghosts in the Machine: Secrets and Surprises of Electronic Documents 73

Chapter 4: Needles in the Haystack: Google and Other Brokers in the Bits Bazaar 109

Chapter 5: Secret Bits: How Codes Became Unbreakable 161

Chapter 6: Balance Toppled: Who Owns the Bits? 195

Chapter 7: You Can’t Say That on the Internet: Guarding the Frontiers of Digital Expression 229

Chapter 8: Bits in the Air: Old Metaphors, New Technologies, and Free Speech 259

 

Conclusion: After the Explosion 295

Appendix: The Internet as System and Spirit 301

Endnotes 317

Index 347

 

 

...