Cyberpl@y: Communicating Online (New Technologies/New Cultures Series) [Hardcover]

Brenda Danet (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1859734197 | ISBN-13: 978-1859734193 | Publication Date: June 2001

The Internet is changing the way we communicate. As a ‘cross’ between letter-writing and conversation, email has altered traditional letter-writing conventions. Websites and chat rooms have made visual aspects of written communication of greater importance, arguably, than ever before. New communication codes continue to evolve with unprecedented speed.

This book explores playfulness and artfulness in digital writing and communication and anwers penetrating questions about this new medium. Under what conditions do old letter-writing norms continue to be important, even in email? Digital greetings are changing the way we celebrate special occasions and public holidays, but will they take the place of paper postcards and greeting cards? The author also looks at how new art forms, such as virtual theatre, ASCII art, and digital folk art on IRC, are flourishing, and how many people collect and display digital fonts on handsome Websites, or even design their own. Intended as a ‘time capsule’ documenting developments online in the mid- to late 1990s, when the Internet became a mass medium, this book treats the computer as an expressive instrument fostering new forms of creativity and popular culture.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is a highly original book with wide appeal on a hot topic ... A splendid book. It will speak to both a scholarly and a general audience and will cut across fields - communication, visual culture, electronic communication, multi-media design, and cultural studies. It is original in its scope and conception. It is astonishingly rich in terms of visual material, ethnographic accounting, historical references, and analytic concerns. The writing is clear and lively." --Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University

"This work provides cogent evidence that the scholarly study of cyberlife has now come of age. Writing with humor and elan, Danet demonstrates that e-life has changed the way we write, the way we think and how we live." --Gary Alan Fine, Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University

"Cyberpl@y does a masterful job of illustrating the deeply meaningful nature of text-based communication online. Through insightful analysis of a variety of forms of online expression, Danet is able to shed new light on new media of communication. It is a book of both historical value, as it examines all too often overlooked subjects (such as ASCII art, fontography, online greetings) in studies of the Internet and the computer. Danet's book greatly pushes forward our understanding of orality and literacy in the digital age." --Steve Jones, University of Illinois

"Brenda Danet applies a unique combination of expertise and skills in sociolinguistics, literature, folklore and aesthetics in this pioneering, empirical study of playfulness in digital communication." --Elihu Katz, University of Pennsylvania and Hebrew University of Jerusalem

"This wonderful new book provides enough surprises to amuse, and amaze ... Semiotics has never looked so exciting." --Monthly Book Reviews of the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies

"A fascinating series of case studies ... Danet encapsulates a transitional moment in computer-mediated communication; Cyberpl@yn0 draws on and summarizes a wealth of information, being unafraid to offer informed speculation." --New Media and Society

"It is an important book that all readers interested in the playful convergence of communication and art on the Internet should read." --Symbolic Interaction

"Among the large number of books that aspire to interpret the unwritten rules of communnication online, this text stands out for the quality of its empirical research and for its examination of the historical roots of the signs and signifiers constantly exchanged on the Net." ---neural.it

About the Author

Brenda Danet, is Professor Emerita of Sociology and Communication and Danny Arnold Chair Emerita in Communication, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 436 pages
• Publisher: Berg Publishers (June 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859734197
• ISBN-13: 978-1859734193
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,441,545 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm a sociologist and communication scholar, now retired from the Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem, and currently a Research Affiliate in the Dept. of Anthropology at Yale University. My recent work focuses on language, culture and communication on the Internet. In 2001 I published Cyberpl@y: Communicating Online (Berg, Oxford). Now I have a new book, co-edited with Susan C. Herring, a linguist at Indiana University, The Multilingual Internet: Language, Communication, and Culture Online (Oxford, 2007). This book, as well as two others, Pulling Strings: Biculturalism in Israeli Bureaucracy (SUNY, 1989) & Cyberpl@y, are all listed on Amazon.
The Table of Contents for The Multilingual Internet is available both at http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~msdanet/multilingTOC.html and at http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Linguistics/SociolinguisticsAnthropologicalL/?view=usa&sf=toc&ci=9780195304800 . You may also be interested in visiting the Companion Website for Cyberpl@y: http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~msdanet/cyberplay/.