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)M. Mitchell Waldrop: The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal (2001)
Filed under book | Tags: · arpanet, biography, computing, cybernetics, history of computing, history of technology, technology
While most people may not be familiar with the name J. C. R. Licklider, he was the guiding spirit behind the greatest revolution of the modern era. At a time when most computers were big, ponderous mainframes, he envisioned them as desktop tools that could empower individuals, foster creativity, and allow the sharing of information all over the world. Working from an obscure office in the depths of the Pentagon, he set in motion the forces that could make his vision real. Writing with the same novelistic flair that made his Complexity “the most exciting intellectual adventure story of the year” (The Washington Post), Waldrop presents the history of this great enterprise and the first full-scale portrait of the man whose dream of a “human-computer symbiosis” changed the course of science and culture, gave us the modern world of computing, and laid the foundation for the Internet age.
Publisher Viking, 2001
Sloan Technology series
ISBN 0670899763, 9780670899760
502 pages
PDF (DJVU; updated on 2012-7-17)
Comment (0)Lewis Mumford: Technics and Civilization (1934-) [English, Spanish]
Filed under book | Tags: · economy, history, history of technology, industrial revolution, machine, technics, technology
The book gives the history of technology and its interplay in shaping and being shaped by civilizations. Mumford asserts that the development of modern technology, rather than springing up during the Industrial Revolution, has its roots in the Middle Ages. He argues it is the moral, the economic, and the political choices we make, not the machines we use that has produced a capitalist industrialized machine-oriented economy, whose imperfect fruits serve the majority so imperfectly. The development of technology is divided into three overlapping phases: ecotechnic, paleotechnic and neotechnic.
First published in England, 1934
Publisher: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, London, Seventh impression, 1955
496 pages
Wikipedia (EN)
Technics and Civilization (English, 1934/1955, updated on 2014-3-19)
Tecnica y civilizacion (Spanish, trans. Aznar de Acevedo, 1971/1992, updated on 2014-3-19)