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Reinventing Technology, Rediscovering Community
``` [Hang on a minute -- the nice people at weber.ucsd.edu might have gotten the RRE server working after all. (The machine underwent large-scale brain surgery last week, and we had not expected RRE's homebrew software to survive.) If you're reading this then we're unexpectedly back in business. I have enclosed CPSR's advertisement for the book that Doug Schuler and I edited. You may recall that I was griping at the excessive price that the publisher insisted on giving it. I threatened to refrain from advertising the book on RRE, whereupon my more diplomatic coeditor succeeded in negotiating this Internet-only price. As a result, I can now recommend that you buy it. It's still a bit much, maybe, but it is a good book. It consists largely of classic papers from the excellent Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing Conferences that CPSR has organized for the last several years. It includes a substantial introduction placing the various projects in historical and institutional context, and it has a cool cover. So here's your chance to help our publisher appreciate the power of the Internet. As Rush Limbaugh says, clear the shelves!]
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Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 23:41:32 -0700
From: Susan Evoy
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Can be forwarded to appropriate individuals and lists
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August 7, 1997
Press Release
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Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility Palo Alto, CA 415-322-3778
NOTE: All royalties from sales of this book go to CPSR.
Reinventing Technology, Rediscovering Community: Critical Explorations of Computing as a Social Practice Edited by Doug Schuler and Phil Agre - CPSR Members
Question: What do "Innkeeping in Cyberspace," "Women's Knowledge," "Virtual Reality," "Computers in the Schools," "Artificial Intelligence at War," and "Affectionate Technology" all have in common?
Answer: They're all examined in "Reinventing Technology, Rediscovering Community: Critical Explorations of Computing as a Social Practice," an exciting new book about the social implications of computing -- NOW available!
Within the briefest historical moment computer technology has found its way into nearly every aspect of modern life. Since 1987, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CSPR) has hosted conferences on the "Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing" (DIAC), to explore this phenomenum. From those conferences, Internet activists Phil Agre ("The Network Observer") and Doug Schuler ("New Community Networks: Wired for Change") have collected many of the DIAC papers (and several others) into a significant new book.
This book provides new and powerful ways of thinking about the role of computers in our lives. It contains pioneering work on some of the most provocative themes in computing including the sometimes disastrous use of advanced computing in weapons systems, the intriguing new world of computer MUD environments, Virtual Reality, women's knowledge, the usefulness of computers in schools, and the new community (computer) networks such as Berkeley's "Community Memory," the world's first such system.
The book contains critical studies of people using computers as well as constructive studies that provide insight into the processes of technological diffusion and new ways of building systems. The book's overriding theme, one that all the contributors in this book address, is "How is computer technology changing the way in which we relate to the world and to each other, and what, if anything, should we do about it?"
This volume is required reading for students and, in fact, for anybody who is compelled and/or repelled by humankind's sudden and profound embrace of computing and communication technology.
CONTENTS: Computing as a Social Practice, Philip E. Agre / Reading "All About" Computerization: How Genre Conventions Shape Non-Fiction Social Analysis, Rob Kling / Questions to Ask and Techno-Fallacies to Avoid in the Consideration of New Information Technologies, Gary T. Marx / Knowledge in Production, Jim Davis and Michael Stack / Moral Issues Involved in Protecting Software as Intellectual Property, Natalie Dandekar / "Virtual Reality" -- Really?, Thomas B. Sheridan and David Zeltzer / Computerization and Women's Knowledge, Lucy Suchman and Brigitte Jordan / Thinking about Computers and Schools: A Skeptical View, Hank Bromley / Artificial Intelligence at War: An Analysis of the Aegis System in Combat, Chris Hables Gray / Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities, Pavel Curtis / Cyberspace Innkeeping: Building Online Community, John Coate / Community Networks: Building a New Participatory Medium, Douglas Schuler / Community Memory: A Case Study in Community Communication, Carl Farrington and Evelyn Pine / The Rainbow Pages: Building Technology with Voice Technology, Paul Resnick and Mel King / Building Community Networks, Philip E. Agre / Affectionate Technology, David Durlach /
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Please clip and send:
Conference Order Form
(Valid only on individual orders received before September 15, 1997 on this form)
Ablex Publishing Corporation 55 Old Post Road - No. 2 P.O. Box 5297 Greenwich, CT 06831-0504
Date: _________________________
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Special Conference Prices -- Cloth: $40.00; Paper: $25.00
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> -- > Susan Evoy * Deputy Director > http://www.cpsr.org/home.html > Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility > P.O. Box 717 Palo Alto CA 94302 >Fax: (650) 322-4748 * Email: evoy@cpsr.org > * ```
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