The Internet Imaginaire

by Patrice Flichy

Book Overview

The collective vision that shaped the emergence of the Internet: what led software designers, managers, employees, politicians, and individuals to develop and adopt one particular technology. In The Internet Imaginaire , sociologist Patrice Flichy examines the collective vision that shaped the emergence of the Internet--the social imagination that envisioned a technological utopia in the birth of a new technology. By examining in detail the discourses...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262062615
• ISBN13: 9780262062619
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: MIT Press
• Length: 255 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.2"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

The history of the Internets

This book was originally publiched in France in 2001. It contains the history of Internet with a focus on the ideas and utopias as formulated by "the digital generation", especially in Wired magazine in the 1990s. The conclusions and theoretical framework are not always totally clear, but what Flichy gives us is a detailed record of the story of Internet and the ideas driving it's evolution, from the hardcore scientists at Narpa to the Clinton-administrations talk of "the Information super highway" to romantics dreaming about a global brain and non-hierarchic, society-transforming communication to cyberpunk and so on. The story stops around year 2000, and someone will have to write a sequel sooner or later. Recommended to students of social science and the humanities, or anyone interested in the early history of the Internet.