David G. Post: In Search of Jefferson’s Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · cyberspace, database, dns, filesharing, intellectual property, internet, networks
A leading Internet authority applies the political thought of Thomas Jefferson to the issue of how cyberspace should be governed.
In 1787, Thomas Jefferson, then the American Minister to France, had the “complete skeleton, skin & horns” of an American moose shipped to him in Paris and mounted in the lobby of his residence as a symbol of the vast possibilities contained in the strange and largely unexplored New World. Taking a cue from Jefferson’s efforts, David Post, one of the nation’s leading Internet scholars, here presents a pithy, colorful exploration of the still mostly undiscovered territory of cyberspace–what it is, how it works, and how it should be governed.
What law should the Internet have, and who should make it? What are we to do, and how are we to think, about online filesharing and copyright law, about Internet pornography and free speech, about controlling spam, and online gambling, and cyberterrorism, and the use of anonymous remailers, or the practice of telemedicine, or the online collection and dissemination of personal information? How can they be controlled? Should they be controlled? And by whom? Post presents the Jeffersonian ideal–small self-governing units, loosely linked together as peers in groups of larger and larger size–as a model for the Internet and for cyberspace community self-governance. Deftly drawing on Jefferson’s writings on the New World in Notes on the State of Virginia, Post draws out the many similarities (and differences) between the two terrains, vividly describing how the Internet actually functions from a technological, legal, and social perspective as he uniquely applies Jefferson’s views on natural history, law, and governance in the New World to illuminate the complexities of cyberspace.
In Search of Jefferson’s Moose is a lively, accessible, and remarkably original overview of the Internet and what it holds for the future.
Publisher Oxford University Press, 2009
Law and Current Events Masters
ISBN 0195342895, 9780195342895
244 pages
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Comments (2)Patrice Flichy: The Internet Imaginaire (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1990s, arpanet, computing, cyberpunk, cyberspace, freenet, history of communications, history of computing, history of technology, internet, networks, technology, usenet, utopia, virtual communities, virtual reality, web, wired
In The Internet Imaginaire, sociologist Patrice Flichy examines the collective vision that shaped the emergence of the Internet—the social imagination that envisioned a technological utopia in the birth of a new technology. By examining in detail the discourses surrounding the development of the Internet in the United States in the 1990s (and considering them an integral part of that development), Flichy shows how an entire society began a new technological era. The metaphorical “information superhighway” became a technical utopia that informed a technological program. The Internet imaginaire, Flichy argues, led software designers, businesses, politicians, and individuals to adopt this one technology instead of another.
Flichy draws on writings by experts—paying particular attention to the gurus of Wired magazine, but also citing articles in Time, Newsweek, and Business Week—from 1991 to 1995. He describes two main domains of the technical imaginaire: the utopias (and ideologies) associated with the development of technical devices and the depictions of an imaginary digital society. He analyzes the founding myths of cyberculture—the representations of technical systems expressing the dreams and experiments of designers and promoters that developed around information highways, the Internet, Bulletin Board systems, and virtual reality. And he offers a treatise on “the virtual society imaginaire,” discussing visionaries from Teilhard de Chardin to William Gibson, the body and the virtual, cyberdemocracy and the end of politics, and the new economy of the immaterial.
Publisher MIT Press, 2007
ISBN 0262062615, 9780262062619
255 pages
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Comment (1)Henry Jenkins, David Thorburn (eds.): Democracy and New Media (2003)
Filed under book | Tags: · cyberspace, democracy, digital divid, hypertext, internet, mass media, new media, politics, technology, virtual communities
Digital technology is changing our politics. The World Wide Web is already a powerful influence on the public’s access to government documents, the tactics and content of political campaigns, the behavior of voters, the efforts of activists to circulate their messages, and the ways in which topics enter the public discourse. The essays collected here capture the richness of current discourse about democracy and cyberspace. Some contributors offer front-line perspectives on the impact of emerging technologies on politics, journalism, and civic experience. What happens, for example, when we increase access to information or expand the arena of free speech? Other contributors place our shifting understanding of citizenship in historical context, suggesting that notions of cyber-democracy and online community must grow out of older models of civic life. Still others consider the global flow of information and test our American conceptions of cyber-democracy against developments in other parts of the world. How, for example, do new media operate in Castro’s Cuba, in post-apartheid South Africa, and in the context of multicultural debates on the Pacific Rim? For some contributors, the new technologies endanger our political culture; for others, they promise civic renewal.
Publisher MIT Press, 2003
Media in Transition series
ISBN: 0262101017, 9780262101011
397 pages
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Comment (0)Gary R. Bunt: iMuslims: Rewiring the House of Islam (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · al-qaeda, blogging, blogosphere, cyberspace, internet, islam, jihad, middle east, technology, youtube
Exploring the increasing impact of the Internet on Muslims around the world, this book sheds new light on the nature of contemporary Islamic discourse, identity, and community.
The Internet has profoundly shaped how both Muslims and non-Muslims perceive Islam and how Islamic societies and networks are evolving and shifting in the twenty-first century, says Gary Bunt. While Islamic society has deep historical patterns of global exchange, the Internet has transformed how many Muslims practice the duties and rituals of Islam. A place of religious instruction may exist solely in the virtual world, for example, or a community may gather only online. Drawing on more than a decade of online research, Bunt shows how social-networking sites, blogs, and other “cyber-Islamic environments” have exposed Muslims to new influences outside the traditional spheres of Islamic knowledge and authority. Furthermore, the Internet has dramatically influenced forms of Islamic activism and radicalization, including jihad-oriented campaigns by networks such as al-Qaeda.
By surveying the broad spectrum of approaches used to present dimensions of Islamic social, spiritual, and political life on the Internet, iMuslims encourages diverse understandings of online Islam and of Islam generally.
Publisher The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill
Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks series
ISBN 978-0-8078-3258-5
376 pages
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Comment (0)Iva Šotnarová: Mediální obraz českých hackerů (2009) [Czech]
Filed under thesis | Tags: · cybercrime, cyberspace, czech republic, hacker culture, hacking, mass media
Práce popisuje hackerské příběhy a legendy, které se objevily ve vybraných médiích v České a Slovenské republice v letech 1989 – 2009. Přináší obraz doby, ve které se příběhy odehrály a kontext, který toto dění ovlivnil. Pomocí analýzy diskurzu popisuje změnu vnímání hackerů médii a zprostředkovaně veřejností. Všímá si posunu významu od původního označení hackera jako počítačového odborníka k novému pojetí, spojenému s nelegální činností a kriminalitou.
Klíčová slova: hacking, hacker, subkultura, internetová kriminalita, kyberprostor, mediální obraz, diskurz, analýza diskurzu
Bakalářská práce
Masarykova univerzita, Fakulta sociálních studií, Mediální a komunikační studia/Mediální studia a žurnalistika
Vedoucí práce: Mgr. Jakub Macek
Brno: FSS MU, 2009
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Read Me! ASCII Culture & The Revenge of Knowledge. Filtered by Nettime (1999)
Filed under book | Tags: · cyberspace, internet, labour, market economy, media art, media culture, media theory, net art, net culture, network culture, software, sound recording, technology
A compilation of writings and debates from the Nettime newsgroup and internet mailing list. This book documents the debates over emerging media technologies that are currently reshaping society. What are the liberatory potentials? Where are the points of political conflict and class struggle in this new culture? What are the pitfalls of new technology? Read Me! provides the beginnings of this discussion and an outline for what has become a continuing forum on the Net.
Edited by Josephine Bosma, Pauline van Mourik Broekman, Ted Byfield, Matthew Fuller, Geert Lovink, Diana McCarty, Pit Schultz Felix Stalder, McKenzie Wark, and Faith Wilding
Publisher: Autonomedia (February, 1999)
ISBN: 1570270899, 978-1570270895
556 pages
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Comment (0)David Holmes (ed.): Virtual Globalization: Virtual Spaces/Tourist Spaces (2001)
Filed under book | Tags: · cyberspace, globalisation, information technology, internet, technology, telematics, tourism, virtual communities
This book examines the interrelationship between the telecommunications and tourism in shaping the nature of space, place and the urban at the end of the twentieth century. They discuss how these agents are instrumental inthe production of homogenous world-spaces, and how these in turn presuppose new kinds of political and cultural identity. This work will be of essential interest to scholars and students in the fields of sociology, geography, cultural studies and media studies.
Publisher Routledge, 2001
Volume 1 of Routledge advances in sociology
ISBN 0415236738, 9780415236737
269 pages
