Johnny Ryan: A History of the Internet and the Digital Future (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · censorship, computing, history of communications, history of computing, history of technology, intellectual property, internet, politics, technology
A great adjustment in human affairs is underway. Political, commercial and cultural life is changing from the centralized, hierarchical and standardized structures of the industrial age to something radically different: the economy of the emerging digital era.
A History of the Internet and the Digital Future tells the story of the development of the Internet from the 1950s to the present, and examines how the balance of power has shifted between the individual and the state in the areas of censorship, copyright infringement, intellectual freedom and terrorism and warfare. Johnny Ryan explains how the Internet has revolutionized political campaigns; how the development of the World Wide Web enfranchised a new online population of assertive, niche consumers; and how the dot-com bust taught smarter firms to capitalize on the power of digital artisans.
In the coming years platforms such as the iPhone and Android rise or fall depending on their treading the line between proprietary control and open innovation. The trends of the past may hold out hope for the record and newspaper industry. From the government-controlled systems of the Cold War to today’s move towards cloud computing, user-driven content and the new global commons, this book reveals the trends that are shaping the businesses, politics and media of the digital future.
Publisher Reaktion Books, 2010
ISBN 1861897774, 9781861897770
246 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-7-17)
Comment (0)Megan Boler (ed.): Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times (2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · activism, alternative media, democracy, internet, journalism, mass media, media activism, politics, tactical media, technology, youtube
In an age of proliferating media and news sources, who has the power to define reality? When the dominant media declared the existence of WMDs in Iraq, did that make it a fact? Today, the “social web” (sometimes known as Web 2.0, groupware, or the participatory Web)—epitomized by blogs, viral videos, and YouTube—creates new pathways for truths to emerge and makes possible new tactics for media activism. In Digital Media and Democracy, leading scholars in media and communication studies, media activists, journalists, and artists explore the contradiction at the heart of the relationship between truth and power today: the fact that the radical democratization of knowledge and multiplication of sources and voices made possible by digital media coexists with the blatant falsification of information by political and corporate powers.
The book maps a new digital media landscape that features citizen journalism, The Daily Show, blogging, and alternative media. The contributors discuss broad questions of media and politics, offer nuanced analyses of change in journalism, and undertake detailed examinations of the use of Web-based media in shaping political and social movements. The chapters include not only essays by noted media scholars but also interviews with such journalists and media activists as Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, Media Matters host Robert McChesney, and Hassan Ibrahim of Al Jazeera.
Publisher MIT Press, 2008
ISBN 0262026422, 9780262026420
464 pages
PDF (updated on 2014-8-29)
Comment (0)Deibert, Palfrey, Rohozinski, Zittrain (eds.): Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · blogging, censorship, digital human rights, internet, internet filtering, internet governance, politics, technology, youtube
Internet filtering, censorship of Web content, and online surveillance are increasing in scale, scope, and sophistication around the world, in democratic countries as well as in authoritarian states. The first generation of Internet controls consisted largely of building firewalls at key Internet gateways; China’s famous “Great Firewall of China” is one of the first national Internet filtering systems. Today the new tools for Internet controls that are emerging go beyond mere denial of information. These new techniques, which aim to normalize (or even legalize) Internet control, include targeted viruses and the strategically timed deployment of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, surveillance at key points of the Internet’s infrastructure, take-down notices, stringent terms of usage policies, and national information shaping strategies. Access Controlled reports on this new normative terrain.
The book, a project from the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), a collaboration of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies, Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and the SecDev Group, offers six substantial chapters that analyze Internet control in both Western and Eastern Europe and a section of shorter regional reports and country profiles drawn from material gathered by the ONI around the world through a combination of technical interrogation and field research methods.
Chapter authors: Ronald Deibert, Colin Maclay, John Palfrey, Hal Roberts, Rafal Rohozinski, Nart Villeneuve, Ethan Zuckerman
Editors Ronald Deibert, John G. Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, Jonathan Zittrain
Publisher MIT Press, 2010
Information Revolution and Global Politics series
ISBN 0262514354, 9780262514354
656 pages
authors
publisher
google books
PDF (PDF chapters, Part 1)
PDF (PDF chapters, Part 2)