by David Clark

352 pages

About

Why the Internet was designed to be the way it is, and how it could be different, now and in the future.

How do you design an internet? The architecture of the current Internet is the product of basic design decisions made early in its history. What would an internet look like if it were designed, today, from the ground up? In this book, MIT computer scientist David Clark explains how the Internet is actually put together, what requirements it was designed to meet, and why different design decisions would create different internets. He does not take today's Internet as a given but tries to learn from it, and from alternative proposals for what an internet might be, in order to draw some general conclusions about network architecture.

Clark discusses the history of the Internet, and how a range of potentially conflicting requirements—including longevity, security, availability, economic viability, management, and meeting the needs of society—shaped its character. He addresses both the technical aspects of the Internet and its broader social and economic contexts. He describes basic design approaches and explains, in terms accessible to nonspecialists, how networks are designed to carry out their functions. (An appendix offers a more technical discussion of network functions for readers who want the details.) He considers a range of alternative proposals for how to design an internet, examines in detail the key requirements a successful design must meet, and then imagines how to design a future internet from scratch. It's not that we should expect anyone to do this; but, perhaps, by conceiving a better future, we can push toward it.

by Robert Horn

271 pages

PDF link (Internet Archive)

ed. Richard Holeton

433 pages

About

This innovative reader addresses the social, cultural, political, and educational implications of today's burgeoning information and communication technologies in substantial critical depth. Using three broad human themes 'Constructing Identity, Building Community, and Seeking Knowledge' this brief freshman reader engages students in exciting rhetorical issues, including "Gender Online, " "The Global Village, " and "Information Overload and New Media." In each case, hopeful and optimistic views are balanced with incisive technology criticism, helping to make cutting-edge social issues intellectually coherent and accessible to your students.

ed. Mark Stefik

397 pages

About

Rejecting the limiting metaphor of "the information superhighway," the contributors propose four richer metaphors for the evolution of the Internet.

The "information superhighway" is a metaphor oft used to describethe internet, used so often that Stefik fears we're in danger ofsubjecting the evolution of the net to the limiting implications of this metaphor. Stefik, along with a host of prescient technothinkers and doers, examine four richer, more powerful metaphorsand their Jungian archetypes that together should expand anyone'sthinking about the cyber world... And those metaphors are: digitallibrary (The Keeper of Knowledge), electronic mail (Communicator), electronic marketplace (Trader), and digital world (Adventurer). The summoning of the archetypes in service of Stefik's argument isless silicon psychobabble than it is a compelling way to organize this book around the very real ways in which the net is being used.

ed. Michael Benedikt

430 pages

PDF link (Monoskop)

About

Cyberspace has been defined as "an infinite artificial world where humans navigate in information-based space" and as "the ultimate computer-human interface." However one defines it, this "virtual reality" is clearly both the strangest and most radically innovative of today's computer developments. These original contributions take up the philosophical basis for cyberspace in ancient thought, the relevance of the body in virtual realities, basic communications principles for cyberspace, the coming dematerialization of architecture, the logic of graphic representation into the third dimension, the design of a noncentralized system for multiparticipant cyberspaces, the ramifications of cyberspace for future workplaces, and a great deal more.

by Michael Joyce

245 pages

About

In Of Two Minds, noted hypertext novelist and writing teacher Michael Joyce explores the new technologies, mediums, and modalities for teaching and writing, ranging from interactive multimedia to virtual reality. As author of Afternoon: A Story, which the New York Times Book Review termed "the most widely read, quoted, and critiqued of all hypertext narratives," and co-developer of Storyspace, an innovative hypertext software acclaimed for offering new kinds of artistic expression, he is uniquely well qualified to explore this stimulating topic.

The essays comprise what Joyce calls "theoretical narratives," woven from e-mail messages, hypertext "nodes," and other kinds of electronic text that move nomadically from one occasion or perspective to another, between the poles of art and instruction , teaching and writing. The nomadic movement of ideas is made effortless by the electronic medium, which makes it easy to cross borders (or erase them) with the swipe of a mouse, and which therefore challenges our notions of intellectual and artistic borders.

Joyce makes it clear that we are not just the natural heirs but, through our visions, the architects of new technologies that promise to enact our visions as much as change them. The collection summons writing from artists, poets, teachers, scientists, and feminist thinkers, and in so doing builds on notions of human possibility as a basis for the broadest kind of conversation in what Joyce deems our increasingly multiple, polymorphous, and polylogous culture.

by Niels Brugger

159 pages

About

An original methodological framework for approaching the archived web, both as a source and as an object of study in its own right.

As life continues to move online, the web becomes increasingly important as a source for understanding the past. But historians have yet to formulate a methodology for approaching the archived web as a source of study. How should the history of the present be written? In this book, Niels Brügger offers an original methodological framework for approaching the web of the past, both as a source and as an object of study in its own right.

While many studies of the web focus solely on its use and users, Brügger approaches the archived web as a semiotic, textual system in order to offer the first book-length treatment of its scholarly use. While the various forms of the archived web can challenge researchers' interactions with it, they also present a range of possibilities for interpretation. The Archived Web identifies characteristics of the online web that are significant now for scholars, investigates how the online web became the archived web, and explores how the particular digitality of the archived web can affect a historian's research process. Brügger offers suggestions for how to translate traditional historiographic methods for the study of the archived web, focusing on provenance, creating an overview of the archived material, evaluating versions, and citing the material. The Archived Web lays the foundations for doing web history in the digital age, offering important and timely guidance for today's media scholars and tomorrow's historians.

by Mark Wilson and Kenneth Corey

235 pages

About

Information Tectonics spatial organization in the electronic age The rapid development and diffusion of information technologies - telecommunications, computers, the Internet - is profoundly changing the character, and structure of interaction at the local, national and international level. Information technology is usually viewed as a technical issue, with analysis focusing on hardware, software and engineering concerns for efficient management and operation. Lost from much of the debate and discussion over information technology is the role of geography and the spatial context of information technology. To further understanding and knowledge of the spatial character and geographic impact of information technology, this volume addresses three key aspects of the phenomenon.* Conceptualising electronic space and placing it into existing and developing theories of spatial and social interaction. What does electronic interaction mean for our theoretical and perceptual understanding of place and distance?* Exploration of the geographic dimensions of electronic commerce, such as financial flows, securities trade, and the re-engineered multinational corporation. How do information technologies change economic and trading relationships? How do electronic relationships change people and places?* Analysis of urban and regional development and IT, with emphasis on IT as a policy measure for urban development and regional growth. Can information technologies and intelligent cities provide the lives we want to lead?

by Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin

259 pages

complete PDF for download

by Clifford Stoll

399 pages

About

In this white-knuckled true story that is “as exciting as any action novel” (The New York Times Book Review), an astronomer-turned-cyber-detective begins a personal quest to expose a hidden network of spies that threatens national security and leads all the way to the KGB.

When Cliff Stoll followed the trail of a 75-cent accounting error at his workplace, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, it led him to the presence of an unauthorized user on the system. Suddenly, Stoll found himself crossing paths with a hacker named “Hunter” who had managed to break into sensitive United States networks and steal vital information.

Stoll made the dangerous decision to begin a one-man hunt of his own: spying on the spy. It was a high-stakes game of deception, broken codes, satellites, and missile bases, one that eventually gained the attention of the CIA. What started as simply observing soon became a game of cat and mouse that ultimately reached all the way to the KGB.

by Stacy Horn

340 pages

About

Drawing on her own firsthand experiences with Echo and other online services she's visited, Stacy Horn will take you into the heart of today's global cybervillage by illuminating one small corner of it, where the most familiar can be the most astonishing, and where the most unexpected bonds are forged in all but pure air. She'll demonstrate, from the inside, just how a cybercommunity is created, how it shows us the truth of our lives. She'll put you, in a word-by-fascinating-word replay, in the middle of some of the Internet's most memorable and groundbreaking dialogues: no-holds-barred cyber-symposiums on the subjects of good and evil, Mom and Dad, Frank Sinatra, hate speech and censorship, romance, and (of course) sex.

by Brian Dear

640 pages

About

At a time when Steve Jobs was only a teenager and Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t even born, a group of visionary engineers and designers—some of them only high school students—in the late 1960s and 1970s created a computer system called PLATO, which was light-years ahead in experimenting with how people would learn, engage, communicate, and play through connected computers. Not only did PLATO engineers make significant hardware breakthroughs with plasma displays and touch screens but PLATO programmers also came up with a long list of software innovations: chat rooms, instant messaging, message boards, screen savers, multiplayer games, online newspapers, interactive fiction, and emoticons. Together, the PLATO community pioneered what we now collectively engage in as cyberculture. They were among the first to identify and also realize the potential and scope of the social interconnectivity of computers, well before the creation of the internet. PLATO was the foundational model for every online community that was to follow in its footsteps. 

The Friendly Orange Glow is the first history to recount in fascinating detail the remarkable accomplishments and inspiring personal stories of the PLATO community. The addictive nature of PLATO both ruined many a college career and launched pathbreaking multimillion-dollar software products. Its development, impact, and eventual disappearance provides an instructive case study of technological innovation and disruption, project management, and missed opportunities. Above all, The Friendly Orange Glow at last reveals new perspectives on the origins of social computing and our internet-infatuated world.

by Douglas Hofstadter

852 pages

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by Vernor Vinge

384 pages

About

Since its first publication in 1981, the short novel True Names by Vernor Vinge has been considered one of the most seminal science fiction works to present a fully fleshed-out concept of cyberspace. A finalist for the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novella and winner of the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, True Names was an inspiration to many innovators who have helped shape the world wide web as we know it today.

The paperback edition of True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier, published in 2001, also contained a feast of articles by computer scientists on the cutting edge of digital science, including Danny Hillis, the founder of Thinking Machines and the first Disney Fellow; Timothy C. May, former chief scientist at Intel; Marvin Minsky, co-founder of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, considered by many to be the "father" of AI; Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer, co-developers of habitat, the first real computer interactive environment; Mark Pesce, co-creator of VRML and the author of the Playful World: How Technology Transforms Our Imagination; and others.

by Ellen Ullman

208 pages

About

In 1997, the computer was still a relatively new tool---a sleek and unforgiving machine that was beyond the grasp of most users. With intimate and unflinching detail, software engineer Ellen Ullman examines the strange ecstasy of being at the forefront of the predominantly male technological revolution, and the difficulty of translating the inherent messiness of human life into artful and efficient code. Close to the Machine is an elegant and revelatory mediation on the dawn of the digital era.