FLOSS Manuals (*2006)

The FLOSS Manuals (FM) is a non-profit foundation founded in 2006 and based in the Netherlands. The foundation is focused on the creation of quality documentation about how to use free software.
Its web site is a wiki (using the TWiki software) focused on the collaborative authoring of manuals. The documentation is licensed under the GPL. Although initially the manuals were covered by the GFDL, the license was changed due to concerns about the limited and non-free nature of the GFDL.

Anyone can contribute to the material at FLOSS Manuals. Each manual has a maintainer – very much like the Debian maintainer system. The maintainer keeps an overview of the manual and discuss with those interested the structure etc. The maintainer is also responsible for gathering new contributors together. All edits are not ‘live’ – the edits are published to the manual when ready. This is to ensure the quality of the manuals is as high and as reliable as possible and that no new user encounters ‘half finished’ content.

Manuals are available as HTML online, or indexed PDF. Additionally manuals can be remixed so anyone can create their own manual and export to indexed PDF, HTML (zip/tar) or a ‘ajax’ include.

Link

Alexander R. Galloway: Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization (2004)

“Is the Internet a vast arena of unrestricted communication and freely exchanged information or a regulated, highly structured virtual bureaucracy? In Protocol, Alexander Galloway argues that the founding principle of the Net is control, not freedom, and that the controlling power lies in the technical protocols that make network connections (and disconnections) possible. He does this by treating the computer as a textual medium that is based on a technological language, code. Code, he argues, can be subject to the same kind of cultural and literary analysis as any natural language; computer languages have their own syntax, grammar, communities, and cultures. Instead of relying on established theoretical approaches, Galloway finds a new way to write about digital media, drawing on his backgrounds in computer programming and critical theory. “Discipline-hopping is a necessity when it comes to complicated socio-technical topics like protocol,” he writes in the preface.

Galloway begins by examining the types of protocols that exist, including TCP/IP, DNS, and HTML. He then looks at examples of resistance and subversion—hackers, viruses, cyberfeminism, Internet art—which he views as emblematic of the larger transformations now taking place within digital culture. Written for a nontechnical audience, Protocol serves as a necessary counterpoint to the wildly utopian visions of the Net that were so widespread in earlier days.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2004
ISBN 0262072475, 9780262072472
260 pages

Review: Jason Lesko (RCCS, 2005).

PDF (updated 2021-12-16)

Understanding New Media: Augmented Knowledge & Culture

This book outlines the development currently underway in the technology of new media and looks further to examine the unforeseen effects of this phenomenon on our culture, our philosophies, and our spiritual outlook. The digital revolution is something fundamentally different from simply the introduction of yet another medium to our culture: it marks a paradigm shift in our relation to all media, to all our senses, all our expressions. The new media are transforming our definitions of culture and knowledge and transcending barriers in ways that will have lasting implications for generations to come.

Understanding New Media: Augmented Knowledge & Culture
By Kim H. Veltman
Edition: illustrated
Published by University of Calgary Press, 2006
ISBN 1552381544, 9781552381540
689 pages
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