The Anarchist In The Library: How The Clash Between Freedom And Control Is Hacking The Real World And Crashing The System - Hardcover

Vaidhyanathan, Siva

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465089844 ISBN 13: 9780465089840

Publisher: Basic Books, 2004

Synopsis

From Napster to Total Information Awareness to flash mobs, the debate over information technology in our lives has revolved around a single question: How closely do we want cyberspace to resemble the real world? Siva Vaidhyanathan enters this debate with a seminal insight: While we've been busy debating how to make cyberspace imitate the world, the world has been busy imitating cyberspace. More and more of our social, political, and religious activities are modeling themselves after the World Wide Web.Vaidhyanathan tells us the key information structure of our time, and the key import from cyberspace into the world, is the "peer-to-peer network." Peer-to-peer networks have always existed--but with the rise of electronic communication, they are suddenly coming into their own. And they are drawing the outlines of a battle for information that will determine much of the culture and politics of our century, affecting everything from society to terrorism, from religion to the latest social fads. The Anarchist in the Library is a radically original look at how this battle defines one of the major fault lines of twenty-first-century civilization.

About this title

About the Author

Siva Vaidhyanathan, a cultural historian and media scholar, is Director of Communication Studies and an Associate Professor in the Department of Culture and Communication at New York University. His research has been profiled on National Public Radio, CNN, International Herald-Tribune Television, and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. He lives in New York City.

From the Back Cover

Praise for The Anarchist in the Library

"Siva Vaidhyanathan has done that rare thing--induced me to rethink my position, revise my conclusions, and enjoy doing it. (And he quotes me accurately.)" -Randy Cohen, author of the New York Times Magazine column "The Ethicist."

"What a thrilling discovery this book is: erudite, eloquent imaginative and personable all at once, The Anarchist in the Library will become not only the ur-text in an increasingly important field, but also the one that is certainly the most fun to read." -Eric Alterman, author of What Liberal Media?

Reviews

This relatively brief book tackles an expansive topic: Internet technology and its effect on our social, political and cultural future. For cultural historian and media scholar Vaidhyanathan (Copyrights and Copywrongs), the digital revolution is about far more than downloading music. Weaving an array of historical examples with prescient analysis, Vaidhyanathan takes the Internet battles common to most readers today-e.g., the well-publicized efforts of the recording industry to stop file-sharing; the practices of those who share music online-to craft a treatise on how technology highlights the eternal cultural struggle between "oligarchy and anarchy." He discusses the evolution of copyright law in the digital realm, and looks provocatively at the political contributions of such technology and the evolution of nation-states in the digital world, at times painting a truly Orwellian vision of how our future might turn out. For example, digital networks now erase borders for commercial gain as well as for piracy, and at the same time such networks, as illustrated by the war on terror, are elusive and ungovernable. Where, how and on what principles do we draw the lines? Vaidhyanathan refrains from offering any quick-fix solutions, instead arguing that the friction between anarchy and the desire for control now highlighted by technology is an essential element in the creation of culture. Vaidhyanathan is a brilliant thinker and an energetic writer. But the sweeping scope of this book, and its vague, theoretical and at times academic slant may leave readers more confused then enlightened. Then again, welcome to the digital world.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465089844
• ISBN 13: 9780465089840
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272