Customer Reviews

From Glasnost to the Internet: Russia's New Infosphere

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The only thing this book is really good for is as a source of references and websites related to the topic. otherwise it is highly annoying as it's main purpose is to present to the reader the virtues of capitalism and the irreversible death of socialism. ellis manages to weave into his book his contempt for feminism and other movements in side sentences, despite the fact that these issues are far removed from the topic he is supposedly discussing. next time ellis writes a book i would wish that he would make his intentions more explicit, so people don't have to waste time sifting through ideological texts when they are in search of academic analysis.

Professor Ellis' "From Glasnost to the Internet" is a brillant work of political and philosophical analysis of how and why information has been used and abused by states and their bureaucracies in recent history. He traces the advent and the impact of the internet on states controled by ideologial systems, like the former Soviet Union, as well as the responses by western bureaucracies to the manifold changes being wrought by new information technologies. Professor Ellis' work is a masterful exegesis of human nature in all its' political guises and an intellectual defense of the most elemental of human freedoms: free and open communication. Worth the read.