As we hurtle into the twenty-first century, will we be passive downloaders of content or active uploaders of meaning? The computer, writes Peter Lunenfeld, is the twenty-first century's culture machine. It is a dream device, serving as the mode of production, the means of distribution, and the site of reception. We haven't quite achieved the flying cars and robot butlers of futurist fantasies, but we do have a machine that can function as a typewriter and a printing press, a paintbrush and a gallery, a piano and a radio, the mail as well as the mail carier. But, warns Lunenfeld, we should temper our celebration with caution; we are engaged in a secret war between downloading and uploading-between passive consumption and active creation-and the outcome will shape our collective futures. In The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading, Lunenfeld makes his case for using digital technologies to shift us from a consumption to a production model. He describes television as the "the high fructose corn syrup of the imagination" and worries that it can cause "cultural diabetes"; prescribes mindful downloading, meaningful uploading, and "info-triage" as cures; and offers tips for crafting "bespoke futures" in what he terms the era of "Web n.0" (interconnectivity to the nth power). He also offers a stand-alone genealogy of digital visionaries, distilling a history of the culture machine that runs from the Patriarchs (Vannevar Bush's WWII generation) to the Hustlers (Bill Gates and Steve Jobs) to the Searchers (Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google fame). After half a century of television-conditioned consumption/downloading, Lunenfeld tells us, we now find ourselves with a vast new infrastructure for uploading. We simply need to find the will to make the best of it.
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In "Materializing New Media", Anna Munster offers an alternative aesthetic genealogy for digital culture. Eschewing the prevailing Cartesian aesthetic that aligns the digital with the disembodied, the formless, and the placeless, Munster seeks to "materialize" digital culture by demonstrating that its aesthetics have reconfigured bodily experience and reconceived materiality. Her topics range from artistic experiments in body-computer interfaces to the impact that corporeal interaction and geopolitical circumstances have on producing new media art and culture. She argues that new media, materiality, perception, and artistic practices now mutually constitute "information aesthetics". Information aesthetics is concerned with new modes of sensory engagement in which distributed spaces and temporal variation play crucial roles. In analyzing the experiments that new media art performs with the materiality of space and time, Munster demonstrates how new media has likewise changed our bodies and those of others in global information culture. "Materializing New Media" calls for a re-examination of the roles of both body and affect in their relation to the virtual and to abstract codes of information. It offers a non-linear approach to aesthetics and art history based on a concept of "folding" that can discern certain kinds of proximities and continuations across distances in time (in particular between the Baroque and the digital). Finally, it analyzes digital culture through a logic of the differential rather than of the binary. This allows the author to overcome a habit of futurism, which until now has plagued analyses of new media art and culture. Technology is now not seen as surpassing the human body but continually reconfiguring it and constitutive of it.
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• Introduction.
• 1: The Information Revolution.
• 2: "Theories of Everything" and the New Copernican Revolution.
• 3: The Computer Revolution in Science and Mathematics.
• 4: Uncomputable Numbers.
• 5: The Computer Revolution in Education.
• 6: Language in the Computer Age.
• 7: Decimal Delenda Est.
• 8: The Computer Revolution in the Arts.
• 9: The Impact of Computers on Everyday Life.
• 10: On Growth.
• 11: Conclusion.
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This text explores the likely impact of the computer in driving a fundamental transformation of our civilization more far-reaching than earlier information revolutions, such as writing and the rise of the early city-states and printing and the Renaissance. The book presents insights and makes predictions of possible future developments in mathematics, science, business, education, the arts and everyday life. While many of the specific predictions may prove to be wrong, the author's perspectives are grounded in current technological capabilities, and while unprecedented changes are predicted, the predictions are couched within a scientifically conservative sensibility.
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This timely book examines the computer revolution as it relates to each of its main areas of application. The author presents a well-honed analysis of the expectations and realisations of this extraordinary device. Revolutions seldom proceed according to a preset plan and the computer revolution is no exception. This book is essential reading for gaining an understanding of where they are now and where they may be expected to be tomorrow.
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• Heads Up! Mental Models for Travelling through the Computer World Dreams of Technological Utopianism Economic, Cultural, and Organization Dimensions of Computerization Computerization and the Transformation of Work Social Relationships in Electronic Forums Privacy and Social Control System Safety and Social Vulnerability Ethical Perspectives and Professional Responsibilities for Information and Computer Science Professionals Subject Index.
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The Second Edition of "Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices" is a collection of 78 articles that examine the social aspects of computerization from a variety of perspectives, many presenting important viewpoints not often discussed in the conventional literature. A number of paired articles comprise thought-provoking head-on debate. Fields represented include computer science, information systems, management, journalism, psychology, law, library science, and sociology. This volume introduces some of the major controversies surrounding the computerization of society and helps readers recognize the social processes that drive and shape computerization. Division into eight provocatively titled sections facilitates course planning for classroom or seminar use. A lead article for each section frames the major controversies, locates the selections within the debates, and points to other relevant literature. The key features include: a fully revised and updated version of the first anthological treatment of the subject; organized to facilitate course planning for classroom or seminar use; and, provides coverage of the influence of computers on a wide variety of fields including computer science, information systems, management, journalism, psychology, law, library science, and sociology. This book includes discussion of the following issues related to computerization: Does computerization demonstrably improve the productivity of organizations? Should computer systems be designed to empower workers? Does electronic mail facilitate the formation of new communities, or does it undermine intimate interaction? Is computerization likely to reduce privacy and personal freedom?
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• Too many secrets-- infinite in all directions-- the power of ideas-- only connect-- the bloody crystal-- the life you save-- the machine stumbles-- a creation unknown.
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In "Moths to the Flame", the author takes us on a tour of the world wrought by modern technology, a technology he points out that is rooted deep inside the military: a technology that when applied to everyday life, may have startling results. Unlike space technology, today's technological race won't simply bring us Tang-flavoured Velcro. Rawlins' stories and anecdotes increase awareness of technology itself as a player in the political and commercial climate of our times. In our head-long rush toward networked humanity Rawlins raises serious concerns about our future jobs and our future wars: we can figure out what kind of job to get today if we know where technology is taking us tomorrow. The book's first four chapters explore the worlds of privacy, virtual reality, publishing and computer networks, while the last four focus on social issues such as warfare, jobs, computer catastrophes, and the future itself. Throughout unusual, eye-opening analogies and historical comparisons - from Egyptian hieroglyphics to the sewing machine to the codebreakers of World War II - give us a context for the computer age, showing how new technologies have always bred intertwined hope and resistance.
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• Preface Acknowledgments
• 1: The Electronic Word: Literary Study and the Digital Revolution
• 2: Digital Rhetoric and the Digital Arts
• 3: Twenty Years After: Digital Decorum and Bi-stable Allusions
• 4: The Extraordinary Convergence: Democracy, Technology, Theory, and the University Curriculum
• 5: Electronic Textbooks and University Structures
• 6: Strange Lands, Strange Languages, and Useful Miracles
• 7: The "Q" Question
• 8: Elegies for the Book
• 9: Operating Systems, Attention Structures, and the Edge of Chaos
• 10: Conversation with a Curmudgeon Index.
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The personal computer has revolutionized the structure of communication, concealing beneath its versatility and consumer appeal a bold transition to electronic, postmodern culture. Unchecked by the inherent limitations of conventional print, digitized text has introduced a radically new medium of expression. Interactive, volatile, mixing word and image, the electronic word challenges all our assumptions about artistic, educational and political discourse. "The Electronic Word", Richard Lanham's collection of witty, provocative and engaging essays, explores this challenge. With hope and enthusiasm, Lanham surveys the effects of electronic text on the arts and letters and how they might be taught in a newly democratized society. To those who view electronic text as a cultural catastrophe, he counters that "electronic expression has come not to destroy the Western arts but to fulfil them." Throughout, Lanham argues that the dichotomy between a fixed, authoritative printed text and the dynamic, negotiable electronic word re-enacts a much older opposition, the ancient debate between the philosophers and the rhetoricians. The computer, an "intrinsically rhetorical device, " enfranchises the free play and experimentation that pervade postmodern arts and letters. It embodies the new kind of seriousness that is now replacing 19th-century cultural solemnity. Whether discussing how electronic text fulfils the expressive agenda of 20th-century visual art and music, how it will revolutionize the university curriculum, how it democratizes the expressive instruments of art, or how it poses anew the cultural accountability of humanism itself, Lanham insists that the move from book to screen gives cause for optimism, not apocalyptic despair. This disk provides this text in electronic form. Using the Voyager Expanded Books software, this hypertext edition allows readers to move through the text, marking "pages", annotating passages, searching words and phrases and immediately accessing annotations, which have been enhanced for this edition. In a prefatory essay, Lanham introduces the features of this electronic edition and gives a critique of this new medium. "The Electronic Word" is designed to be read on any Macintosh computer that has at least 2MB of RAM and a hard disk drive. (4MB of RAM are recommended.) System software 6.07 and HyperCard 2.1 (or HyperCard Player) are required. This Chicago Expanded Book is shipped on 1.4MB high-density floppy disks.
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The personal computer has revolutionized communication, and digitized text has introduced a radically new medium of expression. Interactive, volatile, mixing word and image, the electronic word challenges our assumptions about the shape of culture itself.This highly acclaimed collection of Richard Lanham's witty, provocative, and engaging essays surveys the effects of electronic text on the arts and letters. Lanham explores how electronic text fulfills the expressive agenda of twentieth-century visual art and music, revolutionizes the curriculum, democratizes the instruments of art, and poses anew the cultural accountability of humanism itself. Persuading us with uncommon grace and power that the move from book to screen gives cause for optimism, not despair, Lanham proclaims that "electronic expression has come not to destroy the Western arts but to fulfill them." "The Electronic Word" is also available as a Chicago Expanded Book for your Macintosh (R) . This hypertext edition allows readers to move freely through the text, marking "pages, " annotating passages, searching words and phrases, and immediately accessing annotations, which have been enhanced for this edition. In a special prefatory essay, Lanham introduces the features of this electronic edition and gives a vividly applied critique of this dynamic new edition.
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• The dreams of technological utopianism-- economic and organizational dimensions of computerization-- computerization and the transformation of work-- social relationships in electronic communities-- social control and privacy-- security and reliability-- ethical perspectives and professional responsibilities.
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This book is intended as a primary or secondary text for computer in society, social and ethical implications of computing classes (offered to juniors and seniors), and professionals interested in social and ethical implications of computing. The collected essays introduce some of the major social controversies about the computerization of society. The book aims to help students and professionals recognize some of the social processes that drive and shape computerization, and to identify some of the paradoxes and ironies of computerization. Each of the seven sections opens with an extensive essay that identifies major controversies and places the articles in the context of key questions and debates.
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No descriptive material is available for this title.
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Reporting to users ten years ahead of time, the computer pioneers and strategic planners writing in Technology 2001 discuss the collection of technologies that could well define the computing and communications environment that lies ahead.
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This humorous history of the computer offers a series of anecdotes of the way people view, use and misuse them, describes the uses and abuses to which they are put in personal and business life and underlines the way in which they have infiltrated all aspects of life. A typical tale from the book is one that recounts how a hacker in America found that his baby daughter had slipped a slice of processed cheese into his floppy disc sleeve - having watched him all too closely. The author, once completely computer illiterate, is a freelance writer, whose articles have appeared in the "New York Times", "Newsday", "Cosmopolitan" and others.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)