Love Online: Emotions on the Internet

Computers have changed not just the way we work but the way we love. Falling in and out of love, flirting, cheating, even having sex online have all become part of the modern way of living and loving. Yet we know very little about these new types of relationship. How is an online affair where the two people involved may never see or meet each other different from an affair in the real world? Does online sex still involve cheating on your partner? Why do people tell complete strangers their most intimate secrets? What are the rules of engagement? Will online affairs change the monogamous nature of romantic relationships? These are just some of the questions Professor Aaron Ben Ze’ev, distinguished writer and scholar, addresses in the first full length study of love online. Accessible, shocking, entertaining, enlightening, this book will change the way you look at cyberspace and love forever. Aaron Ben Ze’ev is a Professor at the Univeristy of Haifa in the Philosophy Department and has been the Rector of the University since 2000. He has published articles for many journals such as Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Philosophical Psychology, and Theory & Psychology among others. He has also had numerous books published including The Subtlety of Emotions (MIT Press, 2000) and The Perceptual System: A Philosophical and Psychological Perspective (Peter Lang,1993), both of which have been translated into Hebrew.

Love Online: Emotions on the Internet
By Aharon Ben-Zeʼev
Published by Cambridge University Press, 2004
ISBN 0521832969, 9780521832960
289 pages
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Mark Nunes: Cyberspaces of Everyday Life (2006)

Networks and computer-mediated communication now penetrate the spaces of everyday life at a fundamental level. We communicate, work, bank, date, check the weather, and fuel conspiracy theories online. In each instance, users interact with network technology as much more than a computational device. Cyberspaces of Everyday Life provides a critical framework for understanding how the Internet takes part in the production of social space. Mark Nunes draws on the spatial analysis work of Henri Lefebvre to make sense of cyberspace as a social product. Looking at online education, he explores the ways in which the Internet restructures the university. Nunes also examines social uses of the World Wide Web and illustrates the ways online communication alters the relation between the global and the local. He also applies Deleuzian theory to emphasize computer-mediated communications’ performative elements of spatial production. Addressing the social and cultural implications of spam and anti-spam legislation, as well as how the burst Internet stock bubble and the Patriot Act have affected the relationship between networked spaces and daily living, Cyberspaces of Everyday Life sheds new light on the question of virtual space and its role in the offline world. Mark Nunes is associate professor and chair of the humanities department at Georgia Perimeter College, Clarkston Campus.

Cyberspaces of Everyday Life
By Mark Nunes
Published by University of Minnesota Press, 2006
ISBN 0816647917, 9780816647910
223 pages

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Peter Ludlow (ed.): Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias (2001)

In Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias, Peter Ludlow extends the approach he used so successfully in High Noon on the Electronic Frontier, offering a collection of writings that reflects the eclectic nature of the online world, as well as its tremendous energy and creativity. This time the subject is the emergence of governance structures within online communities and the visions of political sovereignty shaping some of those communities. Ludlow virtual communities as laboratories for conducting experiments in the construction of new societies and governance structures. While many online experiments will fail, Ludlow argues that given the synergy of the online world, new and superior governance structures may emerge. Indeed, utopian visions are not out of place, provided that we understand the new utopias to be fleeting localized “islands in the Net” and not permanent institutions.

The book is organized in five sections. The first section considers the sovereignty of the Internet. The second section asks how widespread access to resources such as Pretty Good Privacy and anonymous remailers allows the possibility of “Crypto Anarchy”—essentially carving out space for activities that lie outside the purview of nation states and other traditional powers. The third section shows how the growth of e-commerce is raising questions of legal jurisdiction and taxation for which the geographic boundaries of nation-states are obsolete. The fourth section looks at specific experimental governance structures evolved by online communities. The fifth section considers utopian and anti-utopian visions for cyberspace.

Contributors: Richard Barbrook, John Perry Barlow, William E. Baugh Jr., David S. Bennahum, Hakim Bey, David Brin, Andy Cameron, Dorothy E. Denning, Mark Dery, Kevin Doyle, Duncan Frissell, Eric Hughes, Karrie Jacobs, David Johnson, Peter Ludlow, Timothy C. May, Jennifer L. Mnookin, Nathan Newman, David G. Post, Jedediah S. Purdy, Charles J. Stivale.

Published by MIT Press, 2001
ISBN 0262621517, 9780262621519
485 pages

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