What's a FAQ? A FAQ (pronounced "fak") or Frequently Asked Questions document is a text form that has developed on the Internet, where new participants often wish to quickly learn the basics about a particular electronic forum or project on the Internet. FAQs ("fax") are intended as reader-friendly ways to summarize the most salient "facts." This new kind of text seems an appropriate way to introduce a book focusing on emerging media and technologies.
1. What's this book about? Why's it called "Composing Cyberspace"?As both Dale Spender (see Chapter 2 and Chapter 6) and Sherry Turkle (see Chapter 1) say about their own books, this is a book about people, not about computers. This book explores the effects that computer technologies have had, are having, and might have on people -- on our human identity, on our values, on our social status and social relations, and on our desire to make and share knowledge.
"Cyberspace," a term coined by science fiction author William Gibson (see Chapter 1 and Chapter 8) for a vast electronic matrix of corporate data, has come to refer to the electronic "place" where any digital information and communication is exchanged. But people compose (or create) this information in all its forms, and therefore it's really people, not electronic bits, who compose (or make up) the population of cyberspace. Cyberspace as a place or entity is by no means a finished product, some complete thing "out there" to which newcomers gain access or admission. On the contrary, it's a work in progress, a project that's barely begun, a process under constant scrutiny by rapidly-increasing numbers of participants. The title "Composing Cyberspace" is intended to emphasize the active participation of people, and their writing (or composing), in this work in progress. As a thoughtful reader of this book, you are already helping shape the features and values of our cyber-future.
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If you follow the news as reported by the mainstream media, you're probably tired of hearing that "technology is taking over our lives," or that people (or at least people of a certain social class) are besieged today with "information overload," or that the "information superhighway" is transforming business, banking, government, consumer entertainment, and so on. You likely have heard claims and statistics such as these:
On the other hand, you may also have heard claims such as these:
Barring some radical change in global politics and economics, it seems clear that the tide, or tidal wave, of computer and network technologies is not going to recede. So far, the shape of that wave has been determined largely by a small group of American high-tech companies and pioneering users from industry, the government, the military, and educational institutions. That situation is changing rapidly as businesses and organizations from all over the world and millions of new people -- at school, at work, and through commercial Internet service providers -- come online. Important decisions about access to information, censorship in cyberspace, educational uses of technology, and other issues will be made over the next few years. To understand these complex issues or to participate in these decisions, it's crucial to explore the social implications of emerging technologies in substantial, critical depth.
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The selections are arranged according to three broad, longstanding human questions:
Who am I? (The question of identity)
Who are we? (The question of community)
What do we know? (The question of knowledge)
Each of these broader questions is explored in three thematic chapters:
Part One: Constructing Identity in the Computer Age
Part Two: Building Community in the Electronic Age
Part Three: Seeking Knowledge in the Information Age
The paper book includes, in each chapter, five provocative reading selections to stimulate your thinking about these themes. Composing Cyberspace Online includes links to those selections that are available on the Web, plus related selections available elsewhere on the Internet.
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Composing Cyberspace includes:
Every chapter offers not only a variety of writing forms but a wide range of social and political views about a particular cyberspace social issue. For example, Chapter 9, "The Classroom of the Future," includes two articles analyzing constructive, beneficial uses of computers in education; a chapter from a prominent critic of the rush to cyberspace; a scholarly argument about the corporate motivations behind classroom technologies; and an excerpt from a bestselling sci-fi novel featuring a futuristic educational "game."
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Forward Thinking. Each chapter opens with a cartoon and an introduction to help contextualize and introduce the reading selections. The introductions also include specific suggestions for thinking about, writing about, or discussing the issues explored in each chapter before you read the selections, so you can frame those issues according to your own values, knowledge, and experience.
Second Thoughts. Each reading selection is followed by several questions meant to help develop your understanding and critical thinking.
Discussion Threads. Each chapter is followed by a set of questions asking you to relate ideas from two, three, four, or all of the chapter's selections. These questions can be used as prompts for discussion or writing, in class or outside of class, for individual or collaborative work. If you communicate with fellow readers on a computer network, you can use the Discussion Threads directly as subject headers for e-mail, newsgroups, bulletin board conferences, or other types of electronic discussions.
Research Links. Each chapter is also followed by specific suggestions for research writing projects that integrate Internet sources with traditional library and non-library sources.
Cyberspace Glossary. Key terms of the latest cyber-jargon are defined for both the initiated and the uninitiated.
Composing Cyberspace Online includes all this editorial apparatus plus:
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