Throughout the course of the weekend, a number of reading suggestions came up in panels and side conversations. I’ve captured all of them and thought I’d share them, with links to more information (and in some cases excerpts)

Here are some more in-depth descriptions of each work. Which ones did I miss?

Books

  • Bit­ter Fruit
    Stephen Schlesinger, Stephen Kinzer, John H. Coatsworth
    Bitter Fruit is a comprehensive and insightful account of the CIA operation to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954. First published in 1982, this book has become a classic, a textbook case of the relationship between the United States and the Third World. The authors make extensive use of U.S. government documents and interviews with former CIA and other officials. It is a warning of what happens when the United States abuses its power.
  • From Counterculture to Cyberculture
    Fred Turner
    Before there was Wikipedia, there was the Whole Earth Catalog, or the first one-stop destination for anyone who ever wanted to know about everything. And before there was the World Wide Web, there was WELL, or the first online computer networking system. These marvels of innovation, of course, came from the mind of Stewart Brand and his acolytes, who would go on to found Wired magazine, and recast computers as a way of bridging differences through online communities and the frontiers of cyberspace. This book is their story. Fred Turner here revisits a forgotten but utterly fascinating chapter in the history of the 60’s counterculture—a look at how Brand and his colleagues brokered a long-running encounter 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 worlds, and the exploration of bold new social frontiers—or the cyberia that we so frequently inhabit today. Shedding new light on how our networked culture came to be, From Counterculture to Cyberculture 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.
  • Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
    Steven Levy (#newsfoo attendee)
    Steven Levy’s classic book about the original hackers of the computer revolution is now available in a special 25th anniversary edition, with updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak. Hackers traces the exploits of innovators from the research labs in the late 1950s to the rise of the home computer in the mid-1980s. It’s a fascinating story for everyone interested in this seminal period in history. [Excerpt]
  • No Sense of Place
    Joshua Meyrowitz
    An attempt to mix the media theories of Marshall MacLuhan and Harold Innis (see below) with the Human Interaction ideas of Irving Goffman. The book helps readers understand how media changes information spaces and how that in turn (continually) changes behavior. [Excerpt]
  • Pandaemonium: The coming of the machine as seen by contemporary observers, 1660-1886
         [compiled] by Humphrey Jennings edited by Mary-Lou Jennings and Charles Madge.
    This collection of contemporary writings from the Industrial Revolution – roughly from the middle of the 17th century to the end of the 19th – is culled from papers gathered by the late film director Humphrey Jennings. The material, from diaries, letters, poems, novels and other sources, is chosen and arranged to conjure up the image of the world in transition.
  • Perilous Times: Free speech in wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the war on terrorism
    Geoffrey R. Stone
    An amazing volume on the history of attacks on the First Amendment during times of war. Beyond understanding how the press has been attacked by the courts and the government under the claim of defending national security, this book also provides historical evidence for how partisan the US press has traditionally been.
  • The Life and Death of Democracy
    John Keane
    Presenting the first grand history of democracy for well over a century, it poses along the way some tough and timely questions: can we really be sure that democracy had its origins in ancient Greece? How did democratic ideals and institutions come to have the shape they do today? Given all the recent fanfare about democracy promotion, why are many people now gripped by the feeling that a bad moon is rising over all the world’s democracies? Do they indeed have a future? Or is perhaps democracy fated to join the poor dodo and the forests of Easter Island in the land of extinction? In particular Keane’s idea of a “Monitoring Democracy” was discussed at the conference.
  • The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
    William H. Whyte
    In 1980, William H. Whyte published the findings from his revolutionary Street Life Project in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Both the book and the accompanying film were instantly labeled classics, and launched a mini-revolution in the planning and study of public spaces. They have since become standard texts, and appear on syllabi and reading lists in urban planning, sociology, environmental design, and architecture departments around the world. Project for Public Spaces, which grew out of Holly’s Street Life Project and continues his work around the world, has acquired the reprint rights to Social Life, with the intent of making it available to the widest possible audience and ensuring that the Whyte family receive their fair share of Holly’s legacy.
  • The Victorian Internet
     Tom Standage (#newsfoo attendee)
    This is the story of the oddballs, eccentrics and visionaries who were the earliest pioneers of the on-line frontier, and the global network they constructed — a network that was, in effect, the Victorian Internet.
  • Understanding Media
    Marshall MacLuhan
    An attempt to wrestle with how electronic media is changing the way that we as humans interact. MacLuhan provides a number of valuable metaphors and ideas in terms of thinking about the challenges that we face today. [Excerpt]
  • What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry
     John Markoff
    Most histories of the personal computer industry focus on technology or business. John Markoff’s landmark book is about the culture and consciousness behind the first PCs—the culture being counter– and the consciousness expanded, sometimes chemically. It’s a brilliant evocation of Stanford, California, in the 1960s and ‘70s, where a group of visionaries set out to turn computers into a means for freeing minds and information. In these pages one encounters Ken Kesey and the phone hacker Cap’n Crunch, est and LSD, The Whole Earth Catalog and the Homebrew Computer Lab. What the Dormouse Said is a poignant, funny, and inspiring book by one of the smartest technology writers around.

Articles

 

#newsfoo books & articles

Throughout the course of the weekend, a number of reading suggestions came up in panels and side conversations. I’ve captured all of them and thought I’d share them, with links…

· No Sense of Place
Joshua Meyrowitz
An attempt to mix the media theories of Marshall MacLuhan and Harold Innis (see below) with the Human Interaction ideas of Irving Goffman. The book helps readers understand how media changes information spaces and how that in turn (continually) changes behavior.

· The Life and Death of Democracy
John Keane
http://www.thelifeanddeathofdemocracy.org/
Presenting the first grand history of democracy for well over a century, it poses along the way some tough and timely questions: can we really be sure that democracy had its origins in ancient Greece? How did democratic ideals and institutions come to have the shape they do today? Given all the recent fanfare about democracy promotion, why are many people now gripped by the feeling that a bad moon is rising over all the world’s democracies? Do they indeed have a future? Or is perhaps democracy fated to join the poor dodo and the forests of Easter Island in the land of extinction? In particular Keane’s idea of a “Monitoring Democracy” was discussed at the conference.

· The Victorian Internet
Tom Standage (#newsfoo attendee)
http://tomstandage.wordpress.com/books/the-victorian-internet/
This is the story of the oddballs, eccentrics and visionaries who were the earliest pioneers of the on-line frontier, and the global network they constructed — a network that was, in effect, the Victorian Internet.

· From Counterculture to Cyberculture
Fred Turner
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=188350
Before there was Wikipedia, there was the Whole Earth Catalog, or the first one-stop destination for anyone who ever wanted to know about everything. And before there was the World Wide Web, there was WELL, or the first online computer networking system. These marvels of innovation, of course, came from the mind of Stewart Brand and his acolytes, who would go on to found Wired magazine, and recast computers as a way of bridging differences through online communities and the frontiers of cyberspace. This book is their story. Fred Turner here revisits a forgotten but utterly fascinating chapter in the history of the 60’s counterculture—a look at how Brand and his colleagues brokered a long-running encounter 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 worlds, and the exploration of bold new social frontiers—or the cyberia that we so frequently inhabit today. Shedding new light on how our networked culture came to be, From Counterculture to Cyberculture 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.

· Pandaemonium: The coming of the machine as seen by contemporary observers, 1660-1886
[compiled] by Humphrey Jennings edited by Mary-Lou Jennings and Charles Madge.
http://openlibrary.org/books/OL2535386M/Pandaemonium
This collection of contemporary writings from the Industrial Revolution – roughly from the middle of the 17th century to the end of the 19th – is culled from papers gathered by the late film director Humphrey Jennings. The material, from diaries, letters, poems, novels and other sources, is chosen and arranged to conjure up the image of the world in transition.

· What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry
John Markoff
http://books.google.com/books?id=cTyfxP-g2IIC&dq=%E2%80%A2%09What+the+Dormouse+Said:+How+the+Sixties+Counterculture+Shaped+the+Personal+Computer+Industry&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Most histories of the personal computer industry focus on technology or business. John Markoff’s landmark book is about the culture and consciousness behind the first PCs—the culture being counter– and the consciousness expanded, sometimes chemically. It’s a brilliant evocation of Stanford, California, in the 1960s and ‘70s, where a group of visionaries set out to turn computers into a means for freeing minds and information. In these pages one encounters Ken Kesey and the phone hacker Cap’n Crunch, est and LSD, The Whole Earth Catalog and the Homebrew Computer Lab. What the Dormouse Said is a poignant, funny, and inspiring book by one of the smartest technology writers around.

· Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
Steven Levy
http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920010227
Steven Levy’s classic book about the original hackers of the computer revolution is now available in a special 25th anniversary edition, with updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak. Hackers traces the exploits of innovators from the research labs in the late 1950s to the rise of the home computer in the mid-1980s. It’s a fascinating story for everyone interested in this seminal period in history.

Articles

· Users as Agents of Technologic

#newsfoo books & articles

Throughout the course of the weekend, a number of reading suggestions came up in panels and side conversations. I’ve captured all of them and thought I’d share them, with links…

  • No Sense of Place
    Joshua Meyrowitz
    An attempt to mix the media theories of Marshall MacLuhan and Harold Innis (see below) with the Human Interaction ideas of Irving Goffman. The book helps readers understand how media changes information spaces and how that in turn (continually) changes behavior.
  • The Life and Death of Democracy
    John Keane
    http://www.thelifeanddeathofdemocracy.org/
    Presenting the first grand history of democracy for well over a century, it poses along the way some tough and timely questions: can we really be sure that democracy had its origins in ancient Greece? How did democratic ideals and institutions come to have the shape they do today? Given all the recent fanfare about democracy promotion, why are many people now gripped by the feeling that a bad moon is rising over all the world’s democracies? Do they indeed have a future? Or is perhaps democracy fated to join the poor dodo and the forests of Easter Island in the land of extinction? In particular Keane’s idea of a “Monitoring Democracy” was discussed at the conference.
  • · The Victorian Internet
    Tom Standage (#newsfoo attendee)
    http://tomstandage.wordpress.com/books/the-victorian-internet/
    This is the story of the oddballs, eccentrics and visionaries who were the earliest pioneers of the on-line frontier, and the global network they constructed — a network that was, in effect, the Victorian Internet.
  • From Counterculture to Cyberculture
    Fred Turner
    http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=188350
    Before there was Wikipedia, there was the Whole Earth Catalog, or the first one-stop destination for anyone who ever wanted to know about everything. And before there was the World Wide Web, there was WELL, or the first online computer networking system. These marvels of innovation, of course, came from the mind of Stewart Brand and his acolytes, who would go on to found Wired magazine, and recast computers as a way of bridging differences through online communities and the frontiers of cyberspace. This book is their story. Fred Turner here revisits a forgotten but utterly fascinating chapter in the history of the 60’s counterculture—a look at how Brand and his colleagues brokered a long-running encounter 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 worlds, and the exploration of bold new social frontiers—or the cyberia that we so frequently inhabit today. Shedding new light on how our networked culture came to be, From Counterculture to Cyberculture 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.
  • Pandaemonium: The coming of the machine as seen by contemporary observers, 1660-1886
    [compiled] by Humphrey Jennings edited by Mary-Lou Jennings and Charles Madge.
    http://openlibrary.org/books/OL2535386M/Pandaemonium
    This collection of contemporary writings from the Industrial Revolution – roughly from the middle of the 17th century to the end of the 19th – is culled from papers gathered by the late film director Humphrey Jennings. The material, from diaries, letters, poems, novels and other sources, is chosen and arranged to conjure up the image of the world in transition.
  • What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry
    John Markoff
    http://books.google.com/books?id=cTyfxP-g2IIC&dq=%E2%80%A2%09What+the+Dormouse+Said:+How+the+Sixties+Counterculture+Shaped+the+Personal+Computer+Industry&source=gbs_navlinks_s
    Most histories of the personal computer industry focus on technology or business. John Markoff’s landmark book is about the culture and consciousness behind the first PCs—the culture being counter– and the consciousness expanded, sometimes chemically. It’s a brilliant evocation of Stanford, California, in the 1960s and ‘70s, where a group of visionaries set out to turn computers into a means for freeing minds and information. In these pages one encounters Ken Kesey and the phone hacker Cap’n Crunch, est and LSD, The Whole Earth Catalog and the Homebrew Computer Lab. What the Dormouse Said is a poignant, funny, and inspiring book by one of the smartest technology writers around.
  • Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
    Steven Levy
    http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920010227
    Steven Levy’s classic book about the original hackers of the computer revolution is now available in a special 25th anniversary edition, with updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak. Hackers traces the exploits of innovators from the research labs in the late 1950s to the rise of the home computer in the mid-1980s. It’s a fascinating story for everyone interested in this seminal period in history.

Articles

  • Users as Agents of Technological Change: The Social Construction of the Automobile in the Rural United States
    Ronald Kline and Trevor Pinch
    An academic essay discussing how farmer’s and other rural residents interpreted (and case modded) Model-T’s when they were first introduced, imagining unexpected uses for them. It’s a helpful article to think about the role that users play in determining what a technology is used for (e.g. reading and the iPhone).
  • White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art
    Manny Farbar
    http://www.jambop.com/jambop/2004/11/white_elephant_.html
    A consideration of the production and ideology of different forms of art.
  • The Bias of Communications
    Harrold Innis

al Change: The Social Construction of the Automobile in the Rural United States
Ronald Kline and Trevor Pinch
An academic essay discussing how farmer’s and other rural residents interpreted (and case modded) Model-T’s when they were first introduced, imagining unexpected uses for them. It’s a helpful article to think about the role that users play in determining what a technology is used for (e.g. reading and the iPhone).

· White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art
Manny Farbar
http://www.jambop.com/jambop/2004/11/white_elephant_.html
A consideration of the production and ideology of different forms of art.

· The Bias of Communications
Harrold Innis