Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives

Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives

by John G. Palfrey, John Palfrey

Two leading experts explain the brave new world inhabited by "digital natives"--the first generation born and raised completely wired. The most enduring change wrought by the digital revolution is neither the new business models nor the new search algorithms, but rather the massive generation gap between those who were born digital and those who were not. The first generation of "digital natives"--children who... (more)

The Hacker Crackdown

Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier

by Bruce Sterling

A journalist investigates the past, present, and future of computer crimes, as he attends a hacker convention, documents the extent of the computer crimes, and presents intriguing facts about hackers and their misdoings. Reprint.

Free Culture

The Nature and Future of Creativity

by Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig, "the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era" ( The New Yorker ), masterfully argues that never before in human history has the power to control creative progress been so concentrated in the hands of the powerful few, the so-called Big Media. Never before have the cultural powers- that-be been able to exert such control over what we can and can’t do with the... (more)

Crowdsourcing

Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business

by Jeff Howe

“The amount of knowledge and talent dispersed among the human race has always outstripped our capacity to harness it. Crowdsourcing corrects that—but in doing so, it also unleashes the forces of creative destruction.” —From Crowdsourcing First identified by journalist Jeff Howe in a June 2006 Wired article, “crowdsourcing” describes the process by which the power of the many can be leveraged to accomplish... (more)

The Pirate's Dilemma

How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism

by Matt Mason

It started with punk. Hip-hop, rave, graffiti, and gaming took it to another level, and now modern technology has made the ideas and innovations of youth culture increasingly intimate and increasingly global at the same time. In The Pirate's Dilemma , VICE magazine's Matt Mason -- poised to become the Malcolm Gladwell of the iPod Generation -- brings the exuberance of a passionate music fan and the... (more)

Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web

Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web

by David Weinberger

From a Web visionary and co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto , a fascinating, ambitious look at how the Web is transforming the concepts on which our society is built. "The Web has not been hyped enough." That's the startling thesis of this one-of-a-kind book that's sure to become a classic work of social commentary. Just as Marshall McLuhan forever altered our view of broadcast media, Weinberger shows that... (more)

Being Digital (Vintage)

by Nicholas Negroponte

In lively, mordantly witty prose, Negroponte decodes the mysteries--and debunks the hype--surrounding bandwidth, multimedia, virtual reality, and the Internet, and explains why such touted innovations as the fax and the CD-ROM are likely to go the way of the BetaMax. "Succinct and readable. . . . If you suffer from digital anxiety . . . here is a book that lays it all out for you."--Newsday.

Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Cyberspace

Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Cyberspace

by Douglas Rushkoff

This is an ideas-led, exuberant documentary about the converging strands of a new era, the empowerments of cyber-technology, and the precipitation of new ways of life. Originally written in 1994, it outlines the strands of the cyber subculture as it was emerging-- the favored drugs, the influential individuals, the hackers and their motivations, the science chaos and the complexity of fractuals. This book will... (more)

The Masters of Deception: Gang That Ruled Cyberspace, The

The Masters of Deception: Gang That Ruled Cyberspace, The

by Michele Slatalla

The bestselling account of a band of kids from New York who fought an electronic turf war that ranged across some of the nation's most powerful computer systems. "An immensely fun and -- one cannot emphasize this enough -- accessible history of the first outlaws in cyberspace."-- Glamour

Mondo 2000: A User's Guide to the New Edge : Cyberpunk, Virtual Reality, Wetware, Designer Aphrodisiacs, Artificial Life, Techno-Erotic Paganism, anRudy Rucker, R. U. Sirius, Queen Mu

Mondo 2000: A User's Guide to the New Edge : Cyberpunk, Virtual Reality, Wetware, Designer Aphrodisiacs, Artificial Life, Techno-Erotic Paganism, an

by Rudy Rucker

An introduction to the coming revolution in art, technology, media, chemistry, science, and music discusses amino chemistry, manotechnology, high-tech paganism, teledildonics, and more. $75,000 ad/promo.

Nexus

Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Theory of Networks

by Mark Buchanan

As Chaos explained the science of disorder, Nexus reveals the new science of connection and the odd logic of six degrees of separation. "If you ever wanted to know how many links connect you and the Pope, or why when the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank sneezes the global economy catches cold, read this book," writes John L. Casti (Santa Fe Institute). This "cogent and engaging" ( Nature ) work presents the... (more)

Vida Digital, A

The Cathedral & The Bazaar

Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary

by Eric S Raymond

The Cathedral & the Bazaar is a must for anyone who cares about the future of the computer industry or the dynamics of the information economy. Its conclusions will be studied, debated, and implemented for years to come. According to Bob Young, "This is Eric Raymond's great contribution to the success of the Open Source Revolution, to the adoption of Linux-based operating systems, and to the success of... (more)

The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit -- Twentieth Anniversary Edition

The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit -- Twentieth Anniversary Edition

by Sherry Turkle

In The Second Self , Sherry Turkle looks at the computer not as a "tool," but as part of our social and psychological lives; she looks beyond how we use computer games and spreadsheets to explore how the computer affects our awareness of ourselves, of one another, and of our relationship with the world. "Technology," she writes, "catalyzes changes not only in what we do but in how we think." First published in... (more)

Chat (Cyberseries, No. 1)

by Nan McCarthy

IT ALL BEGAN WITH A SIMPLE chat:-) This utterly original novel invites you to "eavesdrop" on the electronic correspondence between two people who have just met online: Bev, a tough-minded book editor who has been logging on for years, and Max, a restless advertising copywriter who boldly strikes up a conversation. With each e-mail exchange, two people who are at first faceless come vibrantly alive through... (more)

Hackers

by Jack Dann

A collection of short stories from the virtual frontier follows the exploits of the world's most notorious hackers and includes contributions from Greg Bear, William Gibson, Robert Silverberg, and Bruce Sterling.

Hacking the Future: Stories for the Flesh-Eating 90s (Culturetexts)

Hacking the Future: Stories for the Flesh-Eating 90s (Culturetexts)

by Arthur Kroker

Written in the shadows of the digital age, this book tells the story of that happens when information technology escapes the high tech labs of Silicon Valley and invades the sites of everyday culture. Accompanied by a spoken word CD, Hacking the Future consists of texts by the Krokers and original music composed by David Kristian and Steve Gibson. Illustrations.

Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture

Most writing on cyberculture is dominated by two almost mutually exclusive visions: the heroic image of the male outlaw hacker and the utopian myth of a gender-free cyberworld. Reload offers an alternative picture of cyberspace as a complex and contradictory place where there is oppression as well as liberation. It shows how cyberpunk’s revolutionary claims conceal its ultimate conservatism on matters of class,... (more)

The Internet Imaginaire

by Patrice Flichy

Winning entry, General Trade Cover/Jacket Category, in the 2008 New England Book Show sponsored by Bookbuilders of Boston. In The Internet Imaginaire, sociologist Patrice Flichy examines the collective vision that shaped the emergence of the Internet—the social imagination that envisioned a technological utopia in the birth of a new technology. By examining in detail the discourses surrounding the... (more)

Tagging: People-powered Metadata for the Social Web (Voices That Matter)

Tagging: People-powered Metadata for the Social Web (Voices That Matter)

by Gene Smith

Tagging is fast becoming one of the primary ways people organize and manage digital information. Tagging complements traditional organizational tools like folders and search on users desktops as well as on the web. These developments mean that tagging has broad implications for information management, information architecture and interface design. And its reach extends beyond these technical domains to our culture... (more)

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