Evgeny Morozov: The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (2011)

The internet will set us free—or will it? In this spirited critique of “internet freedom,” blogger and commentator Evgeny Morozov shows how social media and web 2.0 do not always foster civic engagement and democratic reform. In fact, the net can make authoritarian governments even more powerful and repressive.

“The revolution will be Twittered!” declared journalist Andrew Sullivan after protests erupted in Iran in June 2009. Yet for all the talk about the democratizing power of the Internet, regimes in Iran and China are as stable and repressive as ever. In fact, authoritarian governments are effectively using the Internet to suppress free speech, hone their surveillance techniques, disseminate cutting-edge propaganda, and pacify their populations with digital entertainment. Could the recent Western obsession with promoting democracy by digital means backfire?

In this spirited book, journalist and social commentator Evgeny Morozov shows that by falling for the supposedly democratizing nature of the Internet, Western do-gooders may have missed how it also entrenches dictators, threatens dissidents, and makes it harder—not easier—to promote democracy. Buzzwords like “21st-century statecraft” sound good in PowerPoint presentations, but the reality is that “digital diplomacy” requires just as much oversight and consideration as any other kind of diplomacy.

Marshaling compelling evidence, Morozov shows why we must stop thinking of the Internet and social media as inherently liberating and why ambitious and seemingly noble initiatives like the promotion of “Internet freedom” might have disastrous implications for the future of democracy as a whole.

Publisher PublicAffairs, 2011
ISBN 1586488740, 9781586488741
432 pages

commentary (Cory Doctorow, The Guardian)

author
publisher
google books

PDF (PDF; updated 2012-7-15)
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Manuel DeLanda: Deleuze: History and Science (2010)

This is a collection of essays, most published here for the first time, on Gilles Deleuze’s ideas about history and science. Its focus is on ontological or metaphysical questions: What are the legitimate social entities that can be used in historical explanations, given a materialist metaphysics? What are the legitimate inhabitants of the material world, natural and artificial, and what role should science play in determining their legitimacy? What can philosophy contribute to this enterprise?

Editor: Wolfgang Schirmacher
Publisher Atropos Press, 2010
ISBN 0982706715, 9780982706718
168 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-7-17)

Jason Brownlee: Clever Algorithms: Nature-Inspired Programming Recipes (2011)

“This book provides a handbook of algorithmic recipes from the fields of Metaheuristics, Biologically Inspired Computation and Computational Intelligence that have been described in a complete, consistent, and centralized manner. These standardized descriptions were carefully designed to be accessible, usable, and understandable. Most of the algorithms described in this book were originally inspired by biological and natural systems, such as the adaptive capabilities of genetic evolution and the acquired immune system, and the foraging behaviors of birds, bees, ants and bacteria. An encyclopedic algorithm reference, this book is intended for research scientists, engineers, students, and interested amateurs. Each algorithm description provides a working code example in the Ruby Programming Language.”

First Edition. LuLu. January 2011
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License
ISBN 9781446785065
436 pages

Author (incl. source code and additional resources)
lulu.com

PDF (updated on 2013-3-24)
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