Unspun: Key Concepts for Understanding the World Wide Web - Softcover

Homa Katouzian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0814745784 ISBN 13: 9780814745786

Publisher: NYU Press, 1981

Synopsis

Visit the Unspun website which includes Table of Contents and the Introduction.

The World Wide Web has cut a wide path through our daily lives. As claims of "the Web changes everything" suffuse print media, television, movies, and even presidential campaign speeches, just how thoroughly do the users immersed in this new technology understand it? What, exactly, is the Web changing? And how might we participate in or even direct Web-related change?

Intended for readers new to studying the Internet, each chapter in Unspun addresses a different aspect of the "web revolution"--hypertext, multimedia, authorship, community, governance, identity, gender, race, cyberspace, political economy, and ideology--as it shapes and is shaped by economic, political, social, and cultural forces. The contributors particularly focus on the language of the Web, exploring concepts that are still emerging and therefore unstable and in flux. Unspun demonstrates how the tacit assumptions behind this rhetoric must be examined if we want to really know what we are saying when we talk about the Web.

Unspun will help readers more fully understand and become critically aware of the issues involved in living, as we do, in a wired society.

Contributors include: Jay Bolter, Sean Cubitt, Jodi Dean, Dawn Dietrich, Cynthia Fuchs, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Timothy Luke, Vincent Mosco, Lisa Nakamura, Russell Potter, Rob Shields, John Sloop, and Joseph Tabbi.

About this title

About the Author

Thomas Swiss is Center for the Humanities Professor of English and Director of the Web-Assisted Curriculum at Drake University. He is coauthor of The World Wide Web and Contemporary Cultural Theory: Magic, Metaphor, Power.

Review

"You will be enriched by stepping back and looking at the whole spectrum of possibilites presented in this book."

-Technical Communication

"Every essay develops a cultural studies approach to understanding the World Wide Web that feels more unified in purpose than many other collections. Moreover, unlike most of the other collections that comprise the "new millennium" wave . . . , Swiss's book sustains its commitments to critical perspectives throughout. The wide range of interconnected topics makes for a valuable "re-introduction" to the World Wide Web."

-Journal of Advanced Composition

Edition details

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Publication date: 1981
• ISBN 10: 0814745784
• ISBN 13: 9780814745786
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1