JAMES W. CAREY, JOHN J. QUIRK, The Mythos of the Electronic Revolution, The American Scholar, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Summer, 1970), pp. 395-424
The Mythos of the Electronic Revolution
JAMES W. CAREY, JOHN J. QUIRK, The Mythos of the Electronic Revolution, The American Scholar, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Spring, 1970), pp. 219-241
Historical pragmatism and the internet
This article argues that the literature describing the internet revolution in the 1990s was characterized by the rhetoric of the technological sublime. This rhetoric suffered from three fatal flaws: (1) it was not sufficiently grounded in the historical development of technology; (2) it viewed the internet in isolation, failing to consider the wider technological context; and (3) it failed to examine the internet in view of the social, economic, religious and political circumstances of its users. Several examples from history are cited, demonstrating that changes in various systems for the production, dissemination and preservation of cultural information both border and deborder the world. The article suggests that if internet researchers take a pragmatic, historically grounded approach, they will discover that the introduction of internet technology can be seen to have similar consequences. While the technology overcomes many boundaries (of space and time, politics and economics), other social borders may be created at the same time. It is easier to see old boundaries coming down than to see new ones being erected. Rather than being swept by utopian or dystopian enthusiasms, the article insists that the really interesting discoveries are to be made in locating the subtle social shifts taking place, relatively unnoticed, as a consequence of technological change.
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
A witty, often terrifying that chronicles our transform…
The International Research Conference in the History of Computing at Los Alamos, 1976
Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism
Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism
Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism
Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism
The hacker crackdown: law and disorder on the electronic frontier
A journalist investigates the past, present, and future…
Technological parables and iconic illustrations: American technocracy and the rhetoric of the technological fix
This paper traces the role of American technocrats in popularizing the notion later dubbed the ‘technological fix’. Channeled by their long-term ‘chief’, Howard Scott, their claim was that technolo...
Weizenbaum examines computers and society - The Tech
An article from the Tuesday, April 9, 1985 issue of The Tech - MIT's oldest and largest newspaper and the first newspaper published on the Internet.
How we got here
Wherein our hero, in this publication's inaugural, dates himself (as if others would) in a reminiscence of computers and websites past.
Thoughts on Cyberpositionality: The Construction of Digital Communities in Digital Spaces, Damien Patrick Williams
I found Rebecca Monteleone, Martin Perez Comisso, and Elma Hajric’s “Cyberpositionality: Sociotechnical Location in the Digital Age” (2024) to be an extremely timely and important article which can…
A Mathematical Theory of Communication
"A Mathematical Theory of Communication" is an article by mathematician Claude Shannon published in Bell System Technical Journal in 1948. It was renamed The Mathematical Theory of Communication in the 1949 book of the same name, a small but significant title change after realizing the generality of this work. It has tens of thousands of citations, being one of the most influential and cited scientific papers of all time, as it gave rise to the field of information theory, with Scientific American referring to the paper as the "Magna Carta of the Information Age", while the electrical engineer Robert G. Gallager called the paper a "blueprint for the digital era". Historian James Gleick rated the paper as the most important development of 1948, placing the transistor second in the same time period, with Gleick emphasizing that the paper by Shannon was "even more profound and more fundamental" than the transistor.
Janet Jackson had the power to crash laptop computers - The Old New Thing
Not an artistic judgement. Just a technical one.
The Antitrust Revolution, by Barry C. Lynn
Liberal democracy’s last stand against Big Tech
"Historical pragmatism and the internet" by James Carey (2005) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1461444805054107
