Composing Cyberspace: Identity, Community, and Knowledge in the Electronic Age

by Richard Holeton

Book Overview

This text seeks to address the social, cultural, political and educational aspects of the late-20th-century revolution in information and communication technology. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0070295484
• ISBN13: 9780070295483
• Release Date: December 1997
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Langua
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Good one, but too much superficial

It's a good book for students but not so good for researchers. It's very good, academic, but not too deep. In fact, it's a little superficial. I would use this book for my classes but it didn't helped very much my thesis...

Great Book...needs updating

While this is one of the best readers on Communities and Cyberspace many of the essays are dated. While many of the essays like "Gender-Bending", "You Make Me Feel Like a Virtual Woman", and "The Heart of the WELL" that deal with messages boards and gender issues still work quite nicely, some of the others like "Identity in the Age of the Internet: Living in the MUD" do not work as well as they once did because networked gaming now goes past MOOs/MUDs and many students don't relate well to the idea of text based games. That appears to be something reserved for academics and die hard gamers of a time long passed. With the change in computer user profiles over the three years since this text was published a second edition would be welcome. I would like to see what some of the authors in this text would have to say about the fact that studies show women as the internet user majority, the rise in women gamers, the direct correlation between playing video games and the decrease in suicide attempts, the increase of computerized classrooms, as well as (and most importantly) a real addressing of questions of class, race, and computer/internet access. On a whole I would recommend this book for use in the classroom but be aware of the fact that in many cases there will be the need for supplemental readings to bridge the gap in the technology timeline.