October marks the 44th Anniversary of the Birth of the Internet!
On October 29, 1969, the first
connection of what would become the Internet was made when bits of data flowed
between computers at UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute. Nearly a half century later, the Internet has
become a ubiquitous part of our daily lives, an "interconnection
of computer networks" that enables its billions of users to share
information and communicate with one another.
The Mercer County Library System holds
an extensive collection of resources about the Internet, including the
following titles:
By John R. Levine and Margaret Levine
Young
The latest update to a perennial bestseller gets you up and
running on the Internet! Now in its thirteenth edition, this peerless book provides
an updated road map to both the online tools and resources that have defined
the Internet for years, and all the new things that keep Internet users
interested. You will not only find a lot of the basics presented in a straightforward
and friendly style, but will also get the latest on social networking,
security, and much more. The authors begin with an overview of all things
Internet-related and branch into vital topics such as keeping personal
information secure and protecting your kids online. You will gain valuable
insight to web browsers, search options, online shopping, and personal finance
tools. Before you know it, you will know how to use Internet tools to find,
stream, download, or share music, video, and photos. You will learn how to set
up and use online e-mail, chat, and social networking sites; deal with
annoyances like spam and spyware; control what your kids see and do online; pick
a provider, get hooked up to the Internet, and share a connection in your home
or with other devices; use the popular
web browsers and get good search results; and much more. Get going and get online with this
easy-to-understand, helpful guide!
By Eli Pariser
The hidden rise of
personalization on the Internet is controlling--and limiting--the information
we consume. In 2009, Google began customizing its search results. Instead of
giving you the most broadly popular result, Google now tries to predict what
you are most likely to click on. According to MoveOn.org board president Eli
Pariser, this change is symptomatic of the most significant shift to take place
on the Web in
recent years--the rise of personalization. Though the phenomenon has gone
largely undetected until now, personalized filters are sweeping the Web, creating individual universes of information for
each of us. Data companies track your personal information to sell to
advertisers, from your political leanings to the hiking boots you just browsed
on Zappos. In a personalized world,
we will increasingly be typed and fed only news that is pleasant, familiar, and
confirms our beliefs--and because these filters are invisible, we will not know
what is being hidden from us. Our past interests will determine what we are
exposed to in the future, leaving less room for the unexpected encounters that
spark creativity, innovation, and the democratic exchange of ideas.
By Randolph Hock
An essential guide for
anyone who conducts research on the Internet, this fully revised handbook
details what users must know to take full advantage of internet search tools
and resources. From the latest online tools to the new and enhanced services
offered by standbys such as Google, the major search engines and their myriad
possibilities are thoroughly discussed. This revamped fourth edition also
features chapters on fact-checking sites and popular social networking sites as
well as a collection of up-to-date screenshots for visual reference. For those
with little to moderate searching experience, friendly, easy-to-follow
guidelines to the world of Web research are provided, while experienced
searchers will discover new perspectives on content and techniques.
“Hock has been dubbed
the Mario Andretti of web surfing; his clear and useful guide will help anyone
interested in going beyond Google, explaining when, why, and how best to use
various search tools and other web resources. Chapters on creating an Internet
reference shelf, finding multimedia content, and using specialized directories
are particularly helpful; a brief discussion of publishing an online resource,
a glossary, and a URL list round out the title. Appropriate for both
circulating collections and librarians training their customers on Internet
search strategies.”—Library Journal
By William H.
Davidow
The author argues
that the success of the Internet and World Wide Web has also brought about a variety of unique hazards,
including being overconnected, which has a negative impact on economics,
politics, and one's day-to-day life.
“Social
media observers and economic historians will be most intrigued by Davidow’s
thesis regarding the perils of our overconnected world. Shying away from the
typical focus on Facebook or Twitter, he offers a serious, thought-provoking
study that looks at everything from Three Mile Island to the Iceland banking
crisis, and explains how they are related. Davidow points out that financial
“booms, busts, swindles and contagions” are nothing new, but with the role of
the Internet in our personal and professional lives, the connected way we do
business means that financial markets are far too dependent on each other to
separate in moments of crisis. From automated underwriting of mortgage loans to
instant loan approval, the financial sector has not only become more efficient,
it has also speeded up to a degree that allows no time for care or caution. We
are literally moving faster than our ability to control what we do. While it
might seem overly simple to blame technology for our current woes, Davidow
builds a solid case for the price we pay for super-efficiency.”—Booklist
By Ted Claypoole and Theresa Payton
This book helps
readers, young and old alike, understand the implications of their online
personas and reputations. The authors offer a guide to the many pitfalls and
risks of certain online activities and provide a roadmap to taking charge of your own online
reputation for personal and professional success.
By Andrew Blum
When
your Internet cable leaves your living room, where does it go? Almost
everything about our day-to-day lives--and the broader scheme of human
culture--can be found on the Internet. But what is it physically? And where is
it really? Our mental map of the network is as blank as the map of the ocean
that Columbus carried on his first Atlantic voyage. The Internet, its material
nuts and bolts, is an unexplored territory…until now. In Tubes,
journalist Andrew Blum goes inside the Internet's physical infrastructure and
flips on the lights, revealing an utterly fresh look at the online world we
think we know. It is a shockingly tactile realm of unmarked compounds,
populated by a special caste of engineer who pieces together our networks by
hand; where glass fibers pulse with light and creaky telegraph buildings,
tortuously rewired, become communication hubs once again. From the room in Los
Angeles where the Internet first flickered to life to the caverns beneath
Manhattan where new fiber-optic cable is buried; from the coast of Portugal,
where a ten-thousand-mile undersea cable just two thumbs wide connects Europe
and Africa, to the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, where Google, Microsoft, and
Facebook have built monumental data centers—Blum chronicles the dramatic story
of the Internet's development, explains how it all works, and takes the
first-ever in-depth look inside its hidden monuments.
Tubes is
a book about real places on the map: their sounds and smells, their storied
pasts, their physical details, and the people who live there. For all the talk
of the "placelessness" of our digital age, the Internet is as fixed
in real, physical spaces as the railroad or telephone. You can map it and touch
it, and you can visit it. Is the Internet in fact "a series of tubes" as Ted
Stevens, the late senator from Alaska, once famously described it? How can we
know the Internet's possibilities if we don't know its parts? Tubes combines
on-the-ground reporting and lucid explanation into an engaging, mind-bending
narrative to help us understand the physical world that underlies our digital
lives.
“Blum… reflects on his travels and recounts
conversations with people who founded, helped understand, maintained, or
developed the Internet's physical presence.”—Library Journal
By Nicholas G. Carr
As
we enjoy the Internet's bounties,
are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply? Carr describes how
human thought has been shaped through the centuries by "tools of the mind"--from the alphabet
to maps, to the printing press, the
clock, and the computer--and interweaves recent discoveries in
neuroscience. Now, he expands his argument into a compelling exploration of the Internet's intellectual and cultural consequences. Our
brains, scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences.
Building on insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a case that
every information technology carries a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. The printed book served to focus our attention, promoting
deep and creative thought. In contrast, the Internet encourages rapid, distracted sampling of
small bits of information. As we become ever more adept at scanning and
skimming, are we losing our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and
reflection?
“Carr
provides a deep, enlightening examination of how the Internet influences the
brain and its neural pathways. Computers have altered the way we work; how we
organize information, share news and stories, and communicate; and how we
search for, read, and absorb information. Carr's analysis incorporates a wealth
of neuroscience and other research, as well as philosophy, science, history,
and cultural developments. He investigates how the media and tools we use
(including libraries) shape the development of our thinking and considers how
we relate to and think about our brains. Carr also examines the impact of
online searching on memory and explores the overall impact that the tools and
media we use have on memory formation. His fantastic investigation of the effect
of the Internet on our neurological selves concludes with a very humanistic
petition for balancing our human and computer interactions.”—Library Journal
By Robert Waterman McChesney
McChesney looks at
the relationship between economic power and the digital world, encouraging readers to fight back against the
monopolies that are making the Internet less democratic.
“Presents a thorough
and alarming critique of the corruption of one of the most influential
inventions in human history. [McChesney]
deconstructs capitalism through its historical trends before painting a grim
portrait of corporate concentration and monopolization; it reads like dystopian
science-fiction where giants like Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and
Amazon further entrench their market dominance, attempting to own consumers'
‘every waking moment,’ aided and abetted by lax government enforcement and
deregulation. Such concentrated power brings with it a host of concerns;
however, as McChesney cites, very little public opposition to such power can be
expected as, ‘people care more about what unjustly harms them than what
unjustly benefits them.’ Instead, we face the very real possibility of
discovering the ‘digital revolution... to have been a revolution in name only’;
the consequences of which are already revealing themselves.”—Publishers
Weekly
- Lisa S.
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