Customer Reviews

Composing Cyberspace: Identity, Community, and Knowledge in the Electronic Age

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Although Amazon calls Richard Holeton the author of this book (as, indeed, does McGraw-Hill), he would far more aptly be called its compiler. Not that compiling is any less respectable than authoring; the medieval societies in which the compilatio flourished provided us with such revered compilers as Geoffrey Chaucer, who took stories already known to his contemporaries and provided a narrative framework in which each had its place.

In Composing Cyberspace Holeton provides readers with virtually all the foundational texts for a study of technology and society. Here one finds writers musing on the effects of technology as early as 1909 (E.M. Forster's The Air-Ship) and as late as 1997. Every fundamental short work (with the possible exception of Sandy Stone's "How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Prosthesis") on the formation of a human identity in the age of computers is here, including:
- Sherry Turkle's "Identity in the Age of the Internet: Living in the MUD"
- William Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic" and "Burning Chrome"
- Julian Dibbel's "A Rape in Cyberspace"
- Howard Rheingold's "The Heart of the WELL"
There are essays, interviews and fiction by such notables as: George Lakoff, Jon Katz, Dale Spender, Jorge Luis Borges, Clifford Stoll, and many, many more. Even Dave Barry has his say.

Composing Cyberspace is divided into three sections: Constructing Identity in the Computer Age, Building Community in the Electronic Age, and Seeking Knowledge in the Information Age. Each section is divided into chapters containing several texts, each of which is followed by a set of "SecondThoughts" for getting the most out of the text. The chapters themselves also have introductions and sets of "Discussion Threads" and "Research Links" for provoking further topical exploration.

The composition of the book makes it appear as a textbook (and it would be a good one), but Composing Cyberspace is more reader than textbook: a set of works essential to anyone thinking seriously about the impact of electronic communication on society.

While this is one of the best readers on Communities and Cyberspace many of the essays are dated. While many of the essays like "Gender-Bending", "You Make Me Feel Like a Virtual Woman", and "The Heart of the WELL" that deal with messages boards and gender issues still work quite nicely, some of the others like "Identity in the Age of the Internet: Living in the MUD" do not work as well as they once did because networked gaming now goes past MOOs/MUDs and many students don't relate well to the idea of text based games. That appears to be something reserved for academics and die hard gamers of a time long passed.

With the change in computer user profiles over the three years since this text was published a second edition would be welcome. I would like to see what some of the authors in this text would have to say about the fact that studies show women as the internet user majority, the rise in women gamers, the direct correlation between playing video games and the decrease in suicide attempts, the increase of computerized classrooms, as well as (and most importantly) a real addressing of questions of class, race, and computer/internet access.

On a whole I would recommend this book for use in the classroom but be aware of the fact that in many cases there will be the need for supplemental readings to bridge the gap in the technology timeline.

A compendium largely within the boundaries of the liberal social science tradition will be excellent fodder for college-level sociology classes seeking to explore how the Internet challenges modern conventions. Beyond that, look elsewhere.

It's a good book for students but not so good for researchers. It's very good, academic, but not too deep. In fact, it's a little superficial. I would use this book for my classes but it didn't helped very much my thesis...

It's a reader for dumb impressionable first year students at best. If you are really serious about trying to understand common internet culture as it is currently evolving, you are going to waste time and money on this book. Even as a reader it lacks academic rigour, I would be quite worried about the callibre of the course for which this sad, sad attempt is prescribed.