Douglas Rushkoff: Program Or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · blogging, internet, literacy, media literacy, technology
The debate over whether the Net is good or bad for us fills the airwaves and the blogosphere. But for all the heat of claim and counter-claim, the argument is essentially beside the point: it’s here; it’s everywhere. The real question is, do we direct technology, or do we let ourselves be directed by it and those who have mastered it? “Choose the former,” writes Rushkoff, “and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make.” In ten chapters, composed of ten “commands” accompanied by original illustrations from comic artist Leland Purvis, Rushkoff provides cyberenthusiasts and technophobes alike with the guidelines to navigate this new universe.
In this spirited, accessible poetics of new media, Rushkoff picks up where Marshall McLuhan left off, helping readers come to recognize programming as the new literacy of the digital age––and as a template through which to see beyond social conventions and power structures that have vexed us for centuries. This is a friendly little book with a big and actionable message.
Publisher OR Books, 2010
ISBN 1935928155, 9781935928157
149 pages
PDF (PDF, updated on 2012-7-8)
PDF (EPUB, updated on 2012-7-8)
Robert Hassan: Empires of Speed. Time and the Acceleration of Politics and Society (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · blogging, cyberculture, democracy, network society, politics, postmodern, social democracy, speed, time
The beginning of the 21st century is witnessing the emergence of a social, political and technological revolution in networked computing. We now live in a networked society, but it functions and develops at such an accelerating rate that it becomes increasingly difficult to adequately understand the nature of this radical society. Empires of Speed is the first book to analyse the far-reaching transformations of speed-filled everyday life. In a compelling study Hassan shows that we are leaving behind a modern world based upon the time of the clock, and are entering a new and volatile phase where an accelerating ‘network time’ poses fundamental economic and political challenges in our postmodern world, challenges we barely comprehend and are thus woefully unprepared for.
Publisher BRILL, 2009
Volume 4 of Supplements to The study of time
ISBN 9004175903, 9789004175907
Length 254 pages
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)