From sj-approval Sun Jul 30 12:17:12 1995 Return-Path: Received: by world.std.com (5.65c/Spike-2.0) id AA29829; Sun, 30 Jul 1995 16:17:15 -0400 Received: from mail02.mail.aol.com by world.std.com (5.65c/Spike-2.0) id AA29818; Sun, 30 Jul 1995 16:17:14 -0400 Received: by mail02.mail.aol.com (1.37.109.16/16.2) id AA141865432; Sun, 30 Jul 1995 16:17:12 -0400 Date: Sun, 30 Jul 1995 16:17:12 -0400 From: RUBENEWS@aol.com Message-Id: <950730161711_44057052@aol.com> To: sj@world.std.com Subject: NET NOTES 5 Sender: sj-approval@world.std.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: sj FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE NET NOTES 5 COLUMN (This column of source material is written specifically for journalist colleagues around the globe. This information is not for publication. Please share with as many journalist netters as possible.) By Ruben Sosa Villegas c1995 Several recent books address concerns about the Internet. Consider: "The Emperor's Virtual Clothes: The Naked Truth About Internet Culture" Dinty W. Moore (e-mail: dwm7@psuvm.psu.edu) Tentative Publication Date: September 1995 (c1995, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, $17.95 hardcover, ISBN: 1-56512-096-5) Advance uncorrected proofs available from Robert Rubin, Senior Editor, rubinra@delphi.com or at Chapel Hill Office, P.O. Box 2225, Chapel Hill, NC 27515-2225 (919) 967-0108 Fax: (919) 0272. AUTHOR: Dinty Moore is not a pen name. He was named for the character in the early 1900 comic strip "Bringing Up Father." A former documentary filmmaker and UPI reporter, Moore is currently an assistant professor of English at Penn State University's Altoona campus. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania, with his wife and their daughter. NOTES: This book was interesting enough to finish in one sitting. Dinty Moore spent a year surfing the Internet and interviewing the people behind the postings. While most journalists have written about San Francisco's virtual community on The WELL, Moore opts to instead spend time with another Internet community, The Cellar. He interviews Cellar members and attends one of their backyard cookouts. Moore also explores the dangers of the net and offers information on how people are being tricked into divulging their passwords and credit card numbers over commercial servers. Moore explores the concept of personal relationships over the net and critiques that popular sport of spamming. Moore also looks at the technology, but it is Moore's interviews with people that provide this fascinating picture of the Internet. "The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending The Machines In Our Midst" By Stephen L. Talbott (c1995, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., 345 pages, ISBN: 1-56592-085-6) Advance uncorrected proofs available from Sara Winge, Director of Public Relations, sara@ora.com or at 103 Morris Street, Suite A, Sebastopol, CA 95472 (800) 998-9938 or (707) 829-0515, Fax: (707) 829-0104. Publication date: June 30, 1995. Visit O'Reilly & Associates at http://www.ora.com/ or at http://gnn.com/ora/ AUTHOR: Stephen L. Talbott went from Presidential Scholar to farmer, and from editing an interdisciplinary scholarly journal about the catastrophist theories of Immanual Velikovsky, to 14 years working in the computer industry as a senior book editor at O'Reilly & Associates, publishers, a leading publisher of information about and available on the Internet. NOTES: (from the press release): The Future Does Not Compute - The technological Djinn, now loosed from all restraints, tempts us with visions of a surreal future. It is a future with robots who surpass their masters in dexterity and wit; intelligent agents who roam the Net on our behalf, seeking the informational elixir that will make us whole; new communities inhabiting the clean, infinite reaches of cyberspace, freed from war and conflict; and lending libraries of "virtually real" experiences that seem more sensational than the real thing. Not all of this is idle or fantastic speculation - even if it "is" the rather standard gush about our computerized future. Few observers can see any clear limits to what the networked computer might eventually accomplish. It is this stunning, wide-open potential that leads one to wonder what the "universal", can be taken in many directions. This is its very nature. Who will choose the direction - we, or the Djinn? . . . The Net is the most powerful invitation to remain asleep we have ever faced. Contrary to the usual view, it dwarfs television in its power to induce passivity, to scatter our minds, to destroy imaginations, and to make us forget our humanity." NET NOTES 5 -30- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------