The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the SystemFrom Napster to Total Information Awareness to flash mobs, the debate over information technology in our lives has revolved around a single question: How closely do we want cyberspace to resemble the real world? Siva Vaidhyanathan enters this debate with a seminal insight: While we've been busy debating how to make cyberspace imitate the world, the world has been busy imitating cyberspace. More and more of our social, political, and religious activities are modeling themselves after the World Wide Web.Vaidhyanathan tells us the key information structure of our time, and the key import from cyberspace into the world, is the "peer-to-peer network." Peer-to-peer networks have always existed -- but with the rise of electronic communication, they are suddenly coming into their own. And they are drawing the outlines of a battle for information that will determine much of the culture and politics of our century, affecting everything from society to terrorism, from religion to the latest social fads. The Anarchist in the Library is a radically original look at how this battle defines one of the major fault lines of twenty-first-century civilization. |
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User Review - tyroeternal - LibraryThingThe title of the book and the slow beginning almost stopped me from giving serious consideration to this book. Fortunately I held on through all the ever widening turns to see how the author developed ... Read full review
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User Review - PointedPundit - LibraryThingA Critical Message Lost in the Haze I had a graduate school professor who used to talk about his fog index. This professor of Communications Theory believed, as do I, that writers and teachers who ... Read full review
Contents
| 1 | |
The Ideology of PeertoPeer | 15 |
Hacking the Currency | 25 |
The PeertoPeer Revolution and the Future of Music | 41 |
A Work in Progress or the Final Edit? | 65 |
Imagineering | 81 |
Culture as Anarchy | 97 |
The Perfect Library | 115 |
The Anarchy and Oligarchy of Science and Math | 131 |
The NationState Versus Networks | 151 |
The Empire Strikes Back | 167 |
Conclusion | 185 |
| 221 | |
| 245 | |
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activists al Qaeda allow American anar anarchistic anarchy artists Available battle Cambridge century commercial communication compact discs companies conflicts consumers copies copyright law corporate creativity cultural policy cyberspace cynical DeCSS democracy democratic digital rights management Diogenes distributed DMCA economy efforts electronic elite emerging Eminem Show encryption enforcement ethical federal film find firms first freedom FreeNet genes genome global Gnutella hackers Hollywood human ICANN influence Intellectual Property Internet Lawrence Lessig million music industry Napster nation-state nations networks office officials oligarchy patent peer-to-peer peer-to-peer systems People’s Republic piracy pirated political protect protocols Qaeda radical recording industry reflect regulation Revolution RIAA scientific scientists SDMI social society songs specific television terrorists tion trade U.S. government United University Press USA Patriot Act users Washington consensus Wind Done Gone York
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Bibliographic information
| Title | The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System |
| Author | Siva Vaidhyanathan |
| Edition | revised |
| Publisher | Basic Books, 2005 |
| ISBN | 0786722266, 9780786722266 |
| Length | 320 pages |
| Subjects | › Technology & Engineering / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |