Viktor Mayer-Schönberger: Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · facebook, internet, memory, myspace, privacy, surveillance, web 2.0
Delete looks at the surprising phenomenon of perfect remembering in the digital age, and reveals why we must reintroduce our capacity to forget. Digital technology empowers us as never before, yet it has unforeseen consequences as well. Potentially humiliating content on Facebook is enshrined in cyberspace for future employers to see. Google remembers everything we’ve searched for and when. The digital realm remembers what is sometimes better forgotten, and this has profound implications for us all.
In Delete, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger traces the important role that forgetting has played throughout human history, from the ability to make sound decisions unencumbered by the past to the possibility of second chances. The written word made it possible for humans to remember across generations and time, yet now digital technology and global networks are overriding our natural ability to forget–the past is ever present, ready to be called up at the click of a mouse. Mayer-Schönberger examines the technology that’s facilitating the end of forgetting–digitization, cheap storage and easy retrieval, global access, and increasingly powerful software–and describes the dangers of everlasting digital memory, whether it’s outdated information taken out of context or compromising photos the Web won’t let us forget. He explains why information privacy rights and other fixes can’t help us, and proposes an ingeniously simple solution–expiration dates on information–that may.
Delete is an eye-opening book that will help us remember how to forget in the digital age.
Publisher Princeton University Press, 2009
ISBN 0691138613, 9780691138619
237 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-9-23)
Comments (6)Gerd Leonhard: Music 2.0 (2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · business, filesharing, music, p2p, web 2.0
Music2.0 is a hard-hitting, provocative and inspiring collection of essays and blog posts on the future of the music industry. The book continues and expands on the ideas and models presented in the book “The Future of Music”, which has become a must-read work within the music industry.
Music2.0 describes what the next generation of music companies will look like and the new principles that will define the next iteration of the music business.
Music2.0 presents the best of Gerd’s writings from the past four years. As you move from 2003 to 2007 in the book, the evolution of various ideas and expressions can clearly be observed.
cc Gerd Leonhard, 2008
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivate Works 3.0 license
Kazys Varnelis (ed.): Networked Publics (2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · blogging, capitalism, filesharing, information economy, internet, internet of things, locative media, mass media, media ecology, network culture, network society, networks, p2p, rfid, viral marketing, web 2.0, youtube
Digital media and network technologies are now part of everyday life. The Internet has become the backbone of communication, commerce, and media; the ubiquitous mobile phone connects us with others as it removes us from any stable sense of location. Networked Publics examines the ways that the social and cultural shifts created by these technologies have transformed our relationships to (and definitions of) place, culture, politics, and infrastructure.
Four chapters—each by an interdisciplinary team of scholars using collaborative software—provide a synoptic overview along with illustrative case studies. The chapter on place describes how digital networks enable us to be present in physical and networked places simultaneously (on the phone while on the road; on the Web while at a café)—often at the expense of non-digital commitments. The chapter on culture explores the growth of amateur-produced and -remixed content online and the impact of these practices on the music, anime, advertising, and news industries. The chapter on politics examines the new networked modes of bottom-up political expression and mobilization, and the difficulty in channeling online political discourse into productive political deliberation. And finally, the chapter on infrastructure notes the tension between openness and control in the flow of information, as seen in the current controversy over net neutrality. An introduction by anthropologist Mizuko Ito and a conclusion by architecture theorist Kazys Varnelis frame the chapters, giving overviews of the radical nature of these transformations.
Contributors: Walter Baer, François Bar, Anne Friedberg, Shahram Ghandeharizadeh, Mizuko Ito, Mark E. Kann, Merlyna Lim, Fernando Ordonez, Todd Richmond, Adrienne Russell, Marc Tuters, Kazys Varnelis.
Publisher MIT Press, 2008
ISBN 0262220857, 9780262220859
176 pages
author (includes a research blog and lecture videos)
publisher
google books
PDF (updated on 2012-8-7)
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