Best of
Internet

2002

Reinventing Paulo Freire: A Pedagogy Of Love


Antonia Darder - 2002
    Freire believed that education should be used for liberation by helping learners reflect on their experiences historically, giving immediate reality to issues of racism, sexism, and the exploitation of workers. Known as one of the most influential theoretical innovators of the twentieth century, his views have left a significant mark on progressive thinkers about education and liberation. Reinventing Paulo Freire is an homage to him by protégé Antonia Darder. Here, she explores the legacy of Freire, interviews eight teachers who studied his work, and reflects on the act of teaching as demonstrated by Freire himself. The interviews take the form of first person narratives; the epilogue consists simply of a letter and a poem. Reinventing Paulo Friere was selected as a Featured Publication by Kellog Fellows Leadership Alliance in 2003.

Opening the Xbox: Inside Microsoft's Plan to Unleash an Entertainment Revolution


Dean Takahashi - 2002
    It has already eclipsed motion pictures to become one of the largest and fastest growing markets in history and a lamplight illuminating where the future of entertainment is headed. In an effort to grab a chunk of that market, Microsoft—an absolute newcomer to the gaming industry—has put billions of dollars on the line in a gamble to build the fastest, most mature, most advanced video game console ever: the Xbox. Is this new Microsoft venture just another experiment that, like WebTV, was launched to much fanfare but will be quickly forgotten? Or will it become the next Windows, finding its way into the homes and lives of millions of people around the world?In Opening the Xbox, award-winning journalist and gaming-industry expert Dean Takahashi guides you deep into the amazing story of this much-anticipated game console. Through exclusive interviews with top executives at Microsoft, exhaustive research, and a penetrating investigation, he unveils the tumultuous story behind the development of the project and how it could change the entertainment industry forever. Inside, you'll discover that what started as Project Midway, spearheaded by Jonathan "Seamus" Blackley and three of his renegade cohorts, turned into Xbox—a multibillion-dollar enterprise that became Microsoft's largest internal startup ever and a personal pet project of Bill Gates. The colorful infighting, the cutthroat tactics used to lure partners, and the race to vanquish bitter rivals Sony and Nintendo are all laid bare in this unvarnished, high-tech drama. It's a story like no other, full of heroes and villains, plot twists and intrigue—all before the backdrop of Microsoft's grand ambition to move from the office into the living room.If you're like the millions of gamers, investors, and business spectators who anxiously anticipated the Xbox, then you don't want to miss the explosive, exclusive, behind-the-scenes story in Opening the Xbox.

Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth


David Bollier - 2002
    Wade and Brown v. Board of Education. A Texas company was recently allowed to claim a patent on basmati rice, a kind of rice grown in India for hundreds of years. The Mining Act of 1872 is still in effect, allowing companies to buy land from the government at USD5 an acre if they pan to mine it. These are resources that belong to all, yet they are being given away to companies with anything but the common interest in mind. Where was the public outcry, or the government intervention, when these were happening? The answers are alarming. Private corporations are consuming the resources that the American people collectively own at a staggering rate, and the government is not protecting the commons on our behalf. In Silent Theft, David Bollier exposes the audacious attempts of companies to appropriate medical breakthroughs, public airwaves, outer space, state research, and even the DNA of plants and animals. Amazingly, these abuses often go unnoticed, Bollier argues, because we have lost our ability to see the commons. Publicly funded technological innovations create common wealth (cell phone airwaves, internet addresses, gene sequences) at blinding speed, while an economic atmosphere of deregulation and privatization ensures they will be quickly bought and sold. In an age of market triumphalism, does the notion of the commons have any practical meaning? Crisp and revelatory, Silent Theft is a bold attempt to develop a new language of the commons, a new ethos of commonwealth in the face of a market ethic that knows no bounds.

From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics


Slava Gerovitch - 2002
    Followers of cybernetics viewed computer simulation as a universal method of problem solving and the language of cybernetics as a language of objectivity and truth. With this new objectivity, they challenged the existing order of things in economics and politics as well as in science.The history of Soviet cybernetics followed a curious arc. In the 1950s it was labeled a reactionary pseudoscience and a weapon of imperialist ideology. With the arrival of Khrushchev's political thaw, however, it was seen as an innocent victim of political oppression, and it evolved into a movement for radical reform of the Stalinist system of science. In the early 1960s it was hailed as science in the service of communism, but by the end of the decade it had turned into a shallow fashionable trend. Using extensive new archival materials, Gerovitch argues that these fluctuating attitudes reflected profound changes in scientific language and research methodology across disciplines, in power relations within the scientific community, and in the political role of scientists and engineers in Soviet society. His detailed analysis of scientific discourse shows how the Newspeak of the late Stalinist period and the Cyberspeak that challenged it eventually blended into CyberNewspeak.

Dot.con: How America Lost Its Mind and Money in the Internet Era


John Cassidy - 2002
    It was also about an America that believed it had discovered the secret of eternal prosperity: it said something about all of us, and what we thought about ourselves, as the twenty-first century dawned. John Cassidy's Dot.con brings this tumultuous episode to life. Moving from the Cold War Pentagon to Silicon Valley to Wall Street and into the homes of millions of Americans, Cassidy tells the story of the great boom and bust in an authoritative and entertaining narrative. Featuring all the iconic figures of the Internet era -- Marc Andreessen, Jeff Bezos, Steve Case, Alan Greenspan, and many others -- and with a new Afterword on the aftermath of the bust, Dot.con is a panoramic and stirring account of human greed and gullibility.

Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?


Peter Drahos - 2002
    The continent-hopping, three-year court battle fought by activists to bring cheap versions of desperately needed AIDS drugs to South Africa is but one example of how this seemingly arcane area of international regulation has become a crucial battleground in the twenty-first century and is animating activists the world over.This powerful book is the definitive history of how the new global intellectual property regim--the rulebook for the knowledge economy--came to be. Drawing on more than five years of research and more than five hundred interviews with key figures—including negotiators for First and Third World countries, leaders of multinational corporations, and public-interest experts, Information Feudalism uncovers the story of how a small coterie of multi-national corporations wrote the charter for the global information order.Information Feudalism is an authoritative history of the demise of the world's intellectual commons, and a potent call for democratic property rights.

Deadly Messenger


J. Jones - 2002
    Special Agent John Logan has been on the appropriately dubbed Cyber-Slasher case for almost seven years. Always seeming to be one step behind the killer, he’s yet to make a substantial break and his superiors are threatening to pull him from the case. Although the killer’s method of operation varies from case to case, two keys link them all––the use of a rare anesthetic, Phenyltetrizine, and the victim’s intimate association with a mysterious stranger on the Internet. Can Logan catch the killer before someone close to him becomes the next victim?

Cyberculture: The Key Concepts


David Bell - 2002
    Its clear and accessible entries cover aspects ranging from the technical to the theoretical, and from movies to the everyday, including:artificial intelligence cyberfeminism cyberpunk electronic government games HTML Java netiquette piracy.Fully cross-referenced and with suggestions for further reading, this comprehensive guide is an essential resource for anyone interested in this fascinating area.

Maximum Accessibility: Making Your Web Site More Usable for Everyone: Making Your Web Site More Usable for Everyone


John M. Slatin - 2002
    This text provides the practical tools, design techniques, and testing methods to implement web standards without losing any of the functionality of your web site.

Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory Of The Web


David Weinberger - 2002
    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 the new medium of the Web is not only altering social institutions such as business and government but, more important, is transforming bedrock concepts of our culture such as space, time, the public, and even reality itself. Weinberger introduces us to denizens of this new world, among them Zannah, whose online diary turns self-revelation into play; Tim Bray, whose map of the Web reveals what's at the heart of the new Web space; and Danny Yee and Claudiu Popa, part of the new breed of Web experts we trust despite their lack of qualifications. Through stories of life on the Web, an insightful take on some familiar (and some unfamiliar) Web sites, and a wicked sense of humor, Weinberger puts the Web into the social and intellectual context we need to begin assessing its true impact on our lives. The irony, according to Weinberger, is that this new technology is more in tune with our authentic selves than is the modern world. Funny, provocative, and ultimately hopeful, Small Pieces Loosely Joined makes us look at the Web -- and at life -- in a new light. From Small Pieces Loosely Joined: The Web has sent a jolt through our culture, zapping our economy, our ideas about the sharing of creative works, and possibly even institutions such as religion and government. Why? How do we explain the lightning charge of the Web? If it has fallen short of our initial hopes and fears about its transformational powers, why did it excite those hopes and fears in the first place? Why did this technology hit our culture like a bolt from Zeus? Suppose -- just suppose -- that the Web is a new world we're just beginning to inhabit . . . If the Web is changing bedrock concepts such as space, matter, time, perfection, public, knowledge, and morality -- each a chapter of this book -- no wonder we're so damn confused. That's as it should be. The Web is enabling us to rediscover what we've always known about being human: we are connected creatures in a connected world about which we care passionately . . . If this is true, then for all of the over-heated, exaggerated, manic-depressive coverage of the Web, we'd have to conclude that the Web in fact has not been hyped enough.

Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Classroom in a Book [With CDROM]


Adobe Creative Team - 2002
    Thus, when a new version of the popular program appears, designers tend to stand up and take notice--hen get down to the serious business of learning about it And for that, there's no better place to turn than the book from the people behind the product: Adobe Press' Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Classroom in a Book.Using the same style of self-paced instruction employed in the best-selling previous edition, this comprehensive set of Photoshop lessons provides everything you need to dive into the world of print, Web, and graphic design with Photoshop 7. Completely revised to cover all of Photoshop 7's new features (including the new Healing Brush, color correction commands, and file management tools), the book starts with an introductory tour of the software and then progresses on through 16 lessons, covering everything from Photoshop's interface to more complex topics like color management, Web graphics, and photo retouching. You'll find step-by-step instructions for a variety of projects (from beginning to advanced) and review questions at the end of each chapter to reinforce what you've learned. Easy-to-use project files on the accompanying CD-ROM complete the package.