Authors:
Hardcover, 837 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press
Publication Date: 2003-02-14


Reviews :

    This reader collects the texts, videos, and computer programs--many of them now almost impossible to find--that chronicle the history and form the foundation of the still-emerging field of new media. General introductions by Janet Murray and Lev Manovich, along with short introductions to each of the texts, place the works in their historical context and explain their significance. The texts were originally published between World War II--when digital computing, cybernetic feedback, and early notions of hypertext and the Internet first appeared--and the emergence of the World Wide Web--when they entered the mainstream of public life. The texts are by computer scientists, artists, architects, literary writers, interface designers, cultural critics, and individuals working across disciplines. The contributors include (chronologically) Jorge Luis Borges, Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, Ivan Sutherland, William S. Burroughs, Ted Nelson, Italo Calvino, Marshall McLuhan, Billy Kl?Jean Baudrillard, Nicholas Negroponte, Alan Kay, Bill Viola, Sherry Turkle, Richard Stallman, Brenda Laurel, Langdon Winner, Robert Coover, and Tim Berners-Lee. The CD accompanying the book contains examples of early games, digital art, independent literary efforts, software created at universities, and home-computer commercial software. Also on the CD is digitized video, documenting new media programs and artwork for which no operational version exists. One example is a video record of Douglas Engelbart's first presentation of the mouse, word processor, hyperlink, computer-supported cooperative work, video conferencing, and the dividing up of the screen we now call non-overlapping windows; another is documentation of Lynn Hershman's Lorna, the first interactive video art installation....

Authors: Sherry Turkle.
Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: 1997-09-04


Reviews :

    gy of online life and how the computer provokes new ways of thinking about our most basic concepts of self....

    Sherry Turkle is rapidly becoming the sociologist of the Internet, and that's beginning to seem like a good thing. While her first outing, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, made groundless assertions and seemed to be carried along more by her affection for certain theories than by a careful look at our current situation, Life on the Screen is a balanced and nuanced look at some of the ways that cyberculture helps us comment upon real life (what the cybercrowd sometimes calls RL). Instead of giving in to any one theory on construction of identity, Turkle looks at the way various netizens have used the Internet, and especially MUDs (Multi-User Dimensions), to learn more about the possibilities available in apprehending the world. One of the most interesting sections deals with gender, a topic prone to rash and partisan pronouncements. Taking as her motto William James's maxim "Philosophy is the art of imagining alternatives," Turkle shows how playing with gender in cyberspace can shape a person's real-life understanding of gender. Especially telling are the examples of the man who finds it easier to be assertive when playing a woman, because he believes male assertiveness is now frowned upon while female assertiveness is considered hip, and the woman who has the opposite response, believing that it is easier to be aggressive when she plays a male, because as a woman she would be considered "bitchy." Without taking sides, Turkle points out how both have expanded their emotional range. Other topics, such as artificial life, receive an equally calm and sage response, and the first-person accounts from many Internet users provide compelling reading and good source material for readers to draw their own conclusions. ...

Authors: Norbert Wiener.
Paperback, 200 pages
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Publication Date: 1988-03-21


Reviews :

    ...

Authors: Ben Rigby.
Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Publication Date: 2008-04-25


Reviews :

    Use new media to attract and mobilize young people!
Explore and examine the gamut of new media and the ways in which it can be used to recruit, organize, and mobilize young people--who represent the majority of new media users. Answer the questions: What is it? How is it being used? How does it work? How to get started? You'll get concise descriptions, screenshots, case studies, resources, and best practices in language that is easy for non-technical people to understand. You'll also gain a sense of the technology--without requiring any downloads, software or plug-ins....

Authors: Bill Nelson. Amelia Phillips. Frank Enfinger. Christopher Steuart.
Paperback, 704 pages
Publisher: Course Technology
Publication Date: 2007-12-24
Edition: 3

Reviews :

    Master the skills necessary to launch and complete a successful computer investigation with the updated edition of this highly successful book, Guide to Computer Forensics and Investigations. This text will teach readers how to conduct a high-tech investigation, from acquiring digital evidence to reporting its findings. Coverage includes how to set up a forensics lab, how to acquire the proper and necessary tools, and how to conduct the investigation and subsequent digital analysis. The comprehensive coverage and detailed know-how led to the book being listed as recommended reading by the FBI Forensics Communications the United States Certified reading room. The book features free downloads of the latest forensic software, so students become familiar with the tools of the trade....

Authors: Frank W. Abagnale.
Hardcover, 256 pages
Publisher: Broadway
Publication Date: 2007-04-24


Reviews :

   

The charismatic forger immortalized in the film Catch Me If You Can exposes the astonishing tactics of today’s identity theft criminals and offers powerful strategies to thwart them based on his second career as an acclaimed fraud-fighting consultant.
Consider these sobering facts:

        *Six out of ten American companies and government agencies have already been hacked.

        *An estimated 80 percent of birth certificate requests are fulfilled through the mail for people using only a name and a return address. So I could take your name and use my address, and get your birth certificate. From there I’m off to the races.

        *Americans write 39 billion checks a year, and half of these folks never reconcile their bank statements.

        *A Social Security number costs $49 on the black market. A driver’s license goes for $90. A birth certificate will set you back $79.


When Frank Abagnale trains law enforcement officers around the country about identity theft, he asks officers for their names and addresses and nothing more. In a matter of hours he can obtain everything he would need to steal their lives: Social Security numbers, dates of birth, current salaries, checking account numbers, the names of everyone in their families, and more. This illustrates how easy it is for anyone from anywhere in the world to assume our identities and in a matter of hours devastate our lives in ways that can take years to recover from. Considering that a fresh victim is hit every four seconds, Stealing Your Life is the reference everyone needs by an unsurpassed authority on the latest identity theft schemes.

Abagnale offers dozens of concrete steps to transform anyone from an easy mark into a hard case that criminals are likely to bypass:

• Don’t allow your kids to use the computer on which you do online banking and store financial records (children are apt to download games and attachments that host damaging viruses or attract spyware).

• Beware of offers that appeal to greed or fear in exchange for personal data.

• Monitor your credit report regularly and know if anyone’s been “knocking on your door.”

• Read privacy statements carefully and choose to opt out of sharing information whenever possible.


Brimming with anecdotes of creative criminality that are as entertaining as they are enlightening, Stealing Your Life is the practical way to shield yourself from one of today’s most nefarious and common crimes.

...

Authors: Cass R. Sunstein.
Hardcover, 272 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication Date: 2007-08-20


Reviews :

   

What happens to democracy and free speech if people use the Internet to create echo chambers--to listen and speak only to the like-minded? What is the democratic benefit of the Internet's unlimited choices if citizens narrowly limit the information they receive, creating ever-smaller niches and fragmenting the shared public conversation on which democracy depends? Cass Sunstein first asked these questions before 9/11, in Republic.com, and they have become even more urgent in the years since.

Now, in Republic.com 2.0, Sunstein thoroughly rethinks the critical relationship between democracy and the Internet in a world where partisan Web logs have emerged as a significant force in politics and where cyber-jihadists have embraced the Internet to thwart democracy and spread violence.

Emphasizing the value of unplanned, unchosen encounters, the original Republic.com provoked a strong reaction from cyber-optimists. In Republic.com 2.0 Sunstein answers the critics and expands his argument to take account of new developments, including the blogosphere, and fresh evidence about how people are using the Internet. He demonstrates that the real question is how to avoid "information cocoons" and to ensure that the unrestricted choices made possible by technology do not undermine democracy. Sunstein also proposes new remedies and reforms--focusing far less on what government should do, and much more on what consumers and producers should do--to help democracy avoid the perils, and realize the promise, of the Internet.

...

Authors: Matthew Hindman.
Paperback, 198 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication Date: 2008-11-16


Reviews :

   

Is the Internet democratizing American politics? Do political Web sites and blogs mobilize inactive citizens and make the public sphere more inclusive? The Myth of Digital Democracy reveals that, contrary to popular belief, the Internet has done little to broaden political discourse but in fact empowers a small set of elites--some new, but most familiar.

Matthew Hindman argues that, though hundreds of thousands of Americans blog about politics, blogs receive only a miniscule portion of Web traffic, and most blog readership goes to a handful of mainstream, highly educated professionals. He shows how, despite the wealth of independent Web sites, online news audiences are concentrated on the top twenty outlets, and online organizing and fund-raising are dominated by a few powerful interest groups. Hindman tracks nearly three million Web pages, analyzing how their links are structured, how citizens search for political content, and how leading search engines like Google and Yahoo! funnel traffic to popular outlets. He finds that while the Internet has increased some forms of political participation and transformed the way interest groups and candidates organize, mobilize, and raise funds, elites still strongly shape how political material on the Web is presented and accessed.

The Myth of Digital Democracy. debunks popular notions about political discourse in the digital age, revealing how the Internet has neither diminished the audience share of corporate media nor given greater voice to ordinary citizens.

...

Authors: Norbert Wiener.
Paperback, 212 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press
Publication Date: 1965-03-15
Edition: 2

Reviews :

    Acclaimed one of the "seminal books . . . comparable in ultimate importance to . . . Galileo or Malthus or Rousseau or Mill", Cybernetics was judged by twenty-seven historians, economists, educators, and philosophers to be one of those books published during the "past four decades," which may have a substantial impact on public thought and action in the years ahead."—Saturday Review...

Authors: Nancy E. Willard.
Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Publication Date: 2007-03-16


Reviews :

    Essential strategies to keep children and teens safe online

As our children and teens race down the onramp to the Information Superhighway, many parents feel left behind in the dust. News stories about online sexual predators, child pornography, cyberbullies, hate groups, gaming addiction, and other dangers that lurk in the online world make us feel increasingly concerned about what our children are doing (and with whom) in cyberspace. In Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens, Internet safety expert Nancy Willard provides you with need-to-know information about those online dangers, and she gives you the practical parenting strategies necessary to help children and teens learn to use the Internet safely and responsibly.

Parents protect younger children by keeping them in safe places, teaching them simple safety rules, and paying close attention. As children grow, we help them gain the knowledge, skills, and values to make good choices--choices that will keep them safe and show respect for the rights of others. In Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens, Willard shows you how those same strategies can be translated from the real world to the cyberworld, and that you don't have to learn advanced computer skills to put them into effect. As you work on these strategies with your child, you will also discover that remaining engaged with what your children are doing online is much more valuable than any blocking software you could buy.

"Willard blends the perspectives of a wise parent and a serious scholar about issues related to Internet behavior and safety. . . . Pick up the book, open it to any random page, and you will find on that page or nearby a wealth of helpful advice and useful commentary on the cyberreality facing our children and on how to deal with any of the issues she's identified."
--Dick Thornburgh, J.D., former U.S. Attorney General; chair, National Academy of Sciences Committee on Youth Pornography and the Internet

"Simply put, this book is a must-read for anyone--parents, educators, law enforcement, and policymakers alike--concerned with the critical issue of children's internet safety and what to do about it."
--Douglas Levin, senior director of education policy, Cable in the Classroom...