Authors: Maud Lavin.
Paperback, 217 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press
Publication Date: 2002-09-09


Reviews :

    Our culture is dominated by the visual. Yet most writing on design reflects a narrow preoccupation with products, biographies, and design influences. Maud Lavin approaches design from the broader field of visual culture criticism, asking challenging questions about about who really has a voice in the culture and what unseen influences affect the look of things designers produce. Lavin shows how design fits into larger questions of power, democracy, and communication. Many corporate clients instruct designers to convey order and clarity in order to give their companies the look of a clean new world. But since designers cannot clean up messy reality, Lavin shows, they often end up simply veiling it. Lacking the power to influence the content of their commercial work, many designers work simultaneously on other, more fulfilling projects. Lavin is especially interested in the graphic designer’s role in shaping cultural norms. She examines the anti-Nazi propaganda of John Heartfield, the modernist utopian design of Kurt Schwitters and the neue ring werbegestalter, the alternative images of women by studio ringl pit, the activist work of such contemporary designers as Marlene McCarty and Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, and the Internet innovations of David Steuer and others. Throughout the book, Lavin asks how designers can expand the pleasure, democracy, and vitality of communication....

    Clean New World is a somewhat disjointed collection of essays that promises a fresh take on an old dilemma: graphic designers provide the glossy public face of big corporations but are not permitted (or motivated) to reveal the messier realities that underpin public power. Beginning with the exception that proves the rule--the leftist photomontages made by John Heartfield in Weimar Germany--Maud Lavin segues to such contemporary themes as corporate identity work, political art coalitions, and the role of advertising in the U.S. abortion debate. Along the way, the author spotlights women in graphic design who balance bread-and-butter clients with more personally meaningful work and discusses how Web design can make users feel "controlled or in control." The final chapter deals with the cathartic effect a Web-based "soap opera" had on its creators, an eight-writer team that included the author, a faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Maxims pronounced by the gurus of graphic design tend to go unchallenged by practitioners in the field, so you want to cheer Lavin when she butts heads with received wisdom, including Paul Rand's belief that simplicity in design is inherently "truthful." As she points out, the striated logo Rand designed for IBM in 1956 does not reflect some indisputable fact about this corporate behemoth. The reality is just the reverse--corporations seek to cloak themselves in the clean, bright look of good design. But the author's arguments can lack rigor. For example, she discusses how former CBS creative director William Golden teamed up in the '50s with artist Ben Shahn to develop advertisements for a documentary program. Lavin lauds these ads as "humanistic" without stopping to consider the inherent qualities of illustrations in graphic design and the preconceptions evoked by Shahn's well-known style. Several of these essays were originally given as lectures, which might account for their underwhelming effect on the printed page. But why not stretch out and delve deeper when you have a whole book to play with? --Cathy Curtis ...

Authors: Sandra Braman.
Hardcover, 569 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press
Publication Date: 2007-02-01


Reviews :

    As the informational state replaces the bureaucratic welfare state, control over information creation, processing, flows, and use has become the most effective form of power. In Change of State Sandra Braman examines the theoretical and practical ramifications of this "change of state." She looks at the ways in which governments are deliberate, explicit, and consistent in their use of information policy to exercise power, exploring not only such familiar topics as intellectual property rights and privacy but also areas in which policy is highly effective but little understood. Such lesser-known issues include hybrid citizenship, the use of "functionally equivalent borders" internally to allow exceptions to U.S. law, research funding, census methods, and network interconnection. Trends in information policy, argues Braman, both manifest and trigger change in the nature of governance itself.

After laying the theoretical, conceptual, and historical foundations for understanding the informational state, Braman examines 20 information policy principles found in the U.S Constitution. She then explores the effects of U.S. information policy on the identity, structure, borders, and change processes of the state itself and on the individuals, communities, and organizations that make up the state. Looking across the breadth of the legal system, she presents current law as well as trends in and consequences of several information policy issues in each category affected.

Change of State introduces information policy on two levels, coupling discussions of specific contemporary problems with more abstract analysis drawing on social theory and empirical research as well as law. Most important, the book provides a way of understanding how information policy brings about the fundamental social changes that come with the transformation to the informational state....

Authors:
Hardcover, 667 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press
Publication Date: 1995-08-14


Reviews :

    Although there are many competing visions of information infrastructure, there is universal agreement that standards will play a critical role. The history of OSI, the Internet, and industry consortia shows that standards development has become a rich, multifaceted process, critically linked to market strategy and major issues of public policy.

The thirty-three contributions to this book present a comprehensive picture of the state of the art in standards development for information technology and the options for federal policy. The book includes both independent analysis and the perspectives of major stakeholders and other interested parties—such as AT&T, the American National Standards Institute, the European Commission, and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.

A Publication of the Information Infrastructure Project at Harvard University...

Authors: Martin Lister.
Paperback, 404 pages
Publisher: Routledge
Publication Date: 2002-08-15
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    New Media: A Critical Introduction provides a comprehensive overview of the culture, technologies and history of new media. The authors consider the ways in which "new media" really are new, assess claims that a media and technological revolution is underway, and formulate new ways for media studies to respond to current events. They address a range of key debates surrounding the use and promise of new media forms, including issues of authorship, textuality, community, identity, interactivity, vision and visuality, the nature and power of technology, intelligent systems and artificial life. Structured into cross-referenced thematic sections, the book features case studies, a user's guide and an extensive glossary of terms, with summaries of key points and a comprehensive guide to further reading for each section....

Authors: Tiziana Terranova.
Paperback, 208 pages
Publisher: Pluto Press
Publication Date: 2004-07-22


Reviews :

    This is an innovative study of digital culture, in particular the politics of the emerging digital culture, and especially the cultural and political dimensions of network technologies. Across the cybercultural landscape of mailing lists, discussion groups, e-zines and the digital press, it sees the emergence of a new collective political subject, a networked intelligence.

The author touches on key concepts and debates in cultural theory and cultural politics, and makes use of student-friendly examples including cyberfeminism, activism and cyberorganising on the net – such as J18, Seattle, and the anti-war movement.

Terranova presents a sophisticated argument about what the new forms of communication and organisation mean for politics, democracy, and identity. The book draws on online debates about labour, self-organisation, virtual activism, and future identities to outline some of the features of current societies of control (following Hardt and Negri) and the political answers that are being formulated within these new digital cultures....

Authors: R. Michael Alvarez. Thad E. Hall.
Paperback, 204 pages
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Publication Date: 2004-01


Reviews :

    Whether responding to a CNN.com survey or voting for the NFL All-Pro team, computer users are becoming more and more comfortable with Internet polls. Computer use in the United States continues to grow—more than half of all American households now have a personal computer. The next question, then, becomes obvious. Should Americans be able to use the Internet in the most important polls of all?

Some advocates of Internet voting argue that Americans are well suited to casting their ballots online in political elections. They are eager to make use of new technology, and they have relatively broad access to the Internet. Voting would become easier for people stuck at home, at the office, or on the road. Internet voting might encourage greater political participation among young adults, a group that stays away from the polling place in droves. It would hold special appeal for military personnel overseas, whose ability to vote is a growing concern. There are serious concerns, however, regarding computer security and voter fraud, unequal Internet access across socioeconomic lines (the "digital divide"), and the civic consequences of moving elections away from schools and other polling places and into private homes and offices. After all, showing up to vote is the most public civic activity many Americans engage in, and it is often their only overt participation in the democratic process.

In Point, Click, and Vote, voting experts Michael Alvarez and Thad Hall make a strong case for greater experimentation with Internet voting. In their words, "There is no way to know whether any argument regarding Internet voting is accurate unless real Internet voting systems are tested, and they should be tested in small-scale, scientific trials so that their successes and failures can be evaluated." In other words, you never know until you try, and it’s time to try harder.

The authors offer a realistic plan for putting pilot remote Internet voting programs into effect nationwide. Such programs would allow U.S. voters in selected areas to cast their ballots over any Internet connection; they would not even need to leave home. If these pilot programs are successful, the next step is to consider how they might be implemented on a larger scale in future elections....

Authors: Peter Dombrowski. Eugene Gholz.
Hardcover, 224 pages
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication Date: 2006-08-28


Reviews :

    In Buying Military Transformation, Peter Dombrowski and Eugene Gholz analyze the United States military's ongoing effort to capitalize on information technology. New ideas about military doctrine derived from comparisons to Internet Age business practices can be implemented only if the military buys technologically innovative weapons systems. Buying Military Transformation examines how political and military leaders work with the defense industry to develop the small ships, unmanned aerial vehicles, advanced communications equipment, and systems-of-systems integration that will enable the new military format.Dombrowski and Gholz's analysis integrates the political relationship between the defense industry and Congress, the bureaucratic relationship between the firms and the military services, and the technical capabilities of different types of businesses. Many government officials and analysts believe that only entrepreneurial start-up firms or leaders in commercial information technology markets can produce the new, network-oriented military equipment.But Dombrowski and Gholz find that the existing defense industry will be best able to lead military-technology development, even for equipment modeled on the civilian Internet. The U.S. government is already spending billions of dollars each year on its "military transformation" program-money that could be easily misdirected and wasted if policymakers spend it on the wrong projects or work with the wrong firms.In addition to this practical implication, Buying Military Transformation offers key lessons for the theory of "Revolutions in Military Affairs." A series of military analysts have argued that major social and economic changes, like the shift from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age, inherently force related changes in the military. Buying Military Transformation undermines this technologically determinist claim: commercial innovation does not directly determine military innovation; instead, political leadership and military organizations choose the trajectory of defense investment. Militaries should invest in new technology in response to strategic threats and military leaders' professional judgments about the equipment needed to improve military effectiveness.Commercial technological progress by itself does not generate an imperative for military transformation.Clear, cogent, and engaging, Buying Military Transformation is essential reading for journalists, legislators, policymakers, and scholars....

Authors: William D. Eggers.
Paperback, 310 pages
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication Date: 2007-07-28


Reviews :

    A well-written, lively, optimistic book that calls for the transformation of technology in government from lipstick on a bulldog to total information awareness. This book is proactive in nature (see what these governments are really doing), does not call for a wholesale and costly transformation, and employs a subtle shaming of those governments that have not yet joined the 21st century. William Eggers's argument, conservative in nature, states that the world of politics would quickly and markedly benefit from this digital transformation in terms of a fiscal payoff, but a more profound change would result as governments become more transparent, more democratic, and more efficient....

Authors: George Gilder.
Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Publication Date: 2006-05-15
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    Technology insider George Gilder delivers a "compelling" (Wired) look under the hood at a genius-fueled startup.

Thanks to the digital technology revolution, cameras are everywhere—PDAs, phones, anywhere you can put an imaging chip and a lens. Battling to usurp this two-billion-dollar market is a Silicon Valley company, Foveon, whose technology not only produces a superior image but also may become the eye in artificially intelligent machines. Behind Foveon are two legendary figures who made the personal computer possible: Carver Mead of Caltech, one of the founding fathers of information technology, and Federico Faggin, inventor of the CPU—the chip that runs every computer.

George Gilder has covered the wizards of high tech for twenty-five years and has an insider's knowledge of Silicon Valley and the unpredictable mix of genius, drive, and luck that can turn a startup into a Fortune 500 company. The Silicon Eye is a rollicking narrative of some of the smartest—and most colorful—people on earth and their race to transform an entire industry. 13 illustrations....

Authors: Robert G. Owens.
Hardcover, 448 pages
Publisher: Allyn & Bacon
Publication Date: 2003-08-15
Edition: 8