CyberReader

If you are one of the brave souls teaching the culture of the Internet, you will no doubt welcome an edition of the essential texts. At least it will save on all that photocopying. This reader offers what are perceived as the key papers on the theory of cyberspace, freedom and censorship, Cyberwars (flames, Net sex) hypertext, and virtual libraries. Vitanza very sensibly covers all the topics likely to be raised in what [in the UK] would be called 'Cultural Studies'. 

All the obvious names are represented (Howard Rheingold, Sven Birkets, Jay Bolter, Ted Nelson) plus those who tend to show up in anthologies for their fashionability - no matter how flimsy or tangential their contributions (Umberto Eco, Borges, Timothy Leary).  It has two introductions - one which Vitanza calls the Bill Gates/plain vanilla, and the other the 'Timothy Leary' approach, which turns out to be rather unfortunate. 


When the book sets out with the modest yet laudable aim of 'introduc[ing] you to the Internet and the World Wide Web' it's odd that its opening chapter plunges readers into the dense jargon of 'hyper-reality' and 'virtual reality' which is likely to be very baffling to beginners. However, the structure of chapters is consistent: a quick introduction; the reprinted essays (with notes); then an apparatus which includes 'questions and suggestions for further study', URLs of the author's pages and other references to the chapter topic; then 'further reading'. For the practising tutor, these will be useful resources. 

The book has three appendices. One on sources of further information (URLs, listservs) and how to do searches; a glossary of terms (not so good); and a bibliography of printed sources.

Like many books these days bidding to be taken seriously as a reference and a useful guide to current needs, this one is available, regularly updated on the publisher's website. It's good to see that for the most recent edition of CyberReader, bibliographic sources of the selected articles have been added. Another couple of useful updates are the explanations of 'key terms' and introductions to the 'themes' at the start of each section. These details are important for a book aimed at an academic audience.