Cyberculture The Key Concepts

A wide-ranging and up-to-date overview of the fast-changing world of cyberculture.

A wide-ranging and up-to-date overview of the fast-changing world of cyberculture.

The only A-Z guide available on this subject, this book provides a wide-ranging and up-to-date overview of the fast-changing and increasingly important world of cyberculture. Its clear and accessible entries cover aspects ranging from the technical to the theoretical, and from movies to the everyday, including:artificial intelligencecyberfeminismcyberpunkelectronic governmentgamesHTMLJavanetiquettepiracy. Fully cross-referenced and with suggestions for further reading, this comprehensive guide is.

Cyberculture Theorists is the ideal starting point for anyone wanting to understand how to theorise cyberculture in all its forms. It surveys a 'cluster' of works that explore the cultures of cyberspace, the Internet and the information society.

"A sprightly, critical and intelligent guided tour around the mansion of media and communications/cultural research... enormously useful for students and researchers." - James Curran, Goldsmiths, University of London "A highly comprehensive guide to core concepts in media theory and criticism." - Andrew Goodwin, University of San Francisco "A great resource for new under-grads and something I urge my students to buy and use as a hand first ′port of call′ throughout their studies." - Paul Smith, De Montfort University This book covers the key concepts central to understanding recent developments in media and communications studies. Wide-ranging in scope and accessible in style it sets out a useful, clear map of the important theories, methods and debates. The entries critically explore the limits of a key concept as much as the traditions that define it. They include clear definitions, are introduced within the wider context of the field and each one: is fully cross-referenced is appropriately illustrated with examples, tables and diagrams provides a guide to further reading. This book is an essential resource for students of media and communications across sociology, cultural studies, creative industries and of course, media and communications courses.

This impressive set provides a historical contextualization and up-to-date overview of 'cyberculture' – a term understood as the cultural perspective on new information and communications technologies. Presenting a comprehensive account of the evolution, current forms, uses and theories of cyberculture, it brings together a wide range of case studies and thought to create a unique, broad-based resource. Divided into four volumes, each with three sections, the collection maps out key thinking, and features landmark publications as well as cutting-edge interventions. Reflecting the past, present and future developments of cyberculture studies, the selection of articles included in this important work highlight the diversity of approaches, subjects and methods of inquiry involved in this fascinating area.

E-Learning has long been touted as the brave new frontier of education, offering fresh challenges to teachers, students and, indeed, the whole of the education system. Addressing this, Elearning: The Key Concepts is the perfect reference for anyone seeking to navigate the myriad of names, concepts and applications associated with this new era of teaching, training and learning. Taking the reader from A to Z through a range of topics including blogging, course design, plagiarism, search engines and Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), this timely work features: full cross-referencing a substantial introduction exploring the development of the field and putting modern-day challenges in context extensive guides to further reading. The only text of its kind to provide concise and user-friendly definitions of the crucial terms used in this growing field, this is a highly useful resource for online course co-ordinators, undergraduate students taking online courses, students on masters-level online learning courses, and trainers.

In the early 1960s, computers haunted the American popular imagination. Bleak tools of the cold war, they embodied the rigid organization and mechanical conformity that made the military-industrial complex possible. But by the 1990s—and the dawn of the Internet—computers started to represent a very different kind of world: a collaborative and digital utopia modeled on the communal ideals of the hippies who so vehemently rebelled against the cold war establishment in the first place. From Counterculture to Cyberculture is the first book to explore this extraordinary and ironic transformation. Fred Turner here traces the previously untold story of a highly influential group of San Francisco Bay–area entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network. Between 1968 and 1998, via such familiar venues as the National Book Award–winning Whole Earth Catalog, the computer conferencing system known as WELL, and, ultimately, the launch of the wildly successful Wired magazine, Brand and his colleagues brokered a long-running collaboration between San Francisco flower power and the emerging technological hub of Silicon Valley. Thanks to their vision, counterculturalists and technologists alike joined together to reimagine computers as tools for personal liberation, the building of virtual and decidedly alternative communities, and the exploration of bold new social frontiers. Shedding new light on how our networked culture came to be, this fascinating book reminds us that the distance between the Grateful Dead and Google, between Ken Kesey and the computer itself, is not as great as we might think.