Description
Book SynopsisA book about America's romance with computer communication that looks at the internet, not as harbinger of the future or the next big thing, but as an expression of the times. It demonstrates that our ideas about what connected computers are for have been in constant flux since their invention.
Trade ReviewThe Net Effect makes a great contribution to our knowledge on the question of labor in Internet technology. * International Journal of Communciation *
The Net Effect is an excellent resource for anyone reseraching the influence of society on technology. * CHOICE *
& We are romantics even, and perhaps especially, in the face of high technologies, writes Thomas Streeter. In his profound and illuminating analysis of the interactions between technology and desire, Streeter shows how conflicting visions of the internet have not so much reflected the pre-given triumph of a new technology as shaped the possibilities and limitations of who we are and who we might become. -- Peter Stallybrass,University of Pennsylvania
One part palm reader and one part politico, Streeter makes total sense of the Internet: its 60s roots, its 90s ethos, and why it works and feels the way it does today. Whether or not you remember firsthand what a long strange trip its been, The Net Effect will persuade you with its lucid rendering of the shared experiences, strange bedfellows, and stealth mythologies that have shaped what it means to be online. -- Lisa Gitelman,NYU, and author of Always, Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture
Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction 1 "Self-Motivating Exhilaration": On the Cultural Sources of Computer Communication2 Romanticism and the Machine: The Formation of the Computer Counterculture3 Missing the Net: The 1980s, Microcomputers, and the Rise of Neoliberalism4 Networks and the Social Imagination5 The Moment of Wired 6 Open Source, the Expressive Programmer, and the Problem of PropertyConclusion: Capitalism, Passions, Democracy Notes IndexAbout the Author
