Cyber_Reader

'Readers' are edited collections of important writings on a particular topic. In this case the topic is information technology and its impact on society - in the present and the future.

It's a combination of extracts from theoretical position papers and from those sci-fi fiction writers who have imagined the future. The time span is from Charles Babbage's 1864 memoir of working on his Analytic Engine, to meditations from the late 1990s. En route, it takes in seminal writing on hard science from J.C.R. Licklider and Douglas Engelbert, through sociologists Marshall McLuhan and Howard Rheingold, to novelists William Gibson and Jeff Noon.


"This book includes texts from a variety of fields concerned with cyberspace - science, complexity theory, philosophy and metaphysics, sexual politics, art and architecture as well as science fiction - illustrating how these different disciplines inform one another, providing an illuminating and original collection of key extracts from books and essays on the subject."

Each extract is prefaced by a useful introductory essay which puts it into context. It's a pity that some of the essays are not presented in their complete form. Vannevar Bush's exposition of the Memex machine for instance has a far more explosive force as the exhilarating climax to his essay As We May Think . However, this might have left less space for other contributions.

There is something of a leaning towards architecture, a lot of fictional posturing, and some pseudo-scientific wish fulfilment. The best and most readable extracts are those by journalists such as Steven Levy and Roger Lewin which document real developments such as computer viruses and artificial intelligence.

I imagine this book was designed as a textbook to support the many courses now being taught on the Internet and Society - and it is there it will be of most use. It introduces readers to the ideas which have shaped the relationships between IT and mankind.