The best technology writing 2010 / Julian Dibbell, editor.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dibbell, Julian, Author.

Contributor:

Dibbell, Julian, editor.

Series:

Best Technology Writing

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Technical literature.

Technological innovations.

Digital media.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vii, 338 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The iPad. The Kindle. Twitter. When the Best Technology Writing series was inaugurated in 2005, these technologies did not exist. Now they define our 21st-century lives. As Julian Dibbell writes in his introduction to The Best Technology Writing 2010, "The digital is us. Yet for that reason, it is also something more, a lightning rod for our feelings about technology in general." Whether it is Sam Anderson's giddy but troubled defense of online distractions, David Carr's full-throated elegy to the dying world of pre-digital publishing, Steven Johnson's warm appreciation of Twitter's bite-size contributions to collective human intelligence, or Evan Ratliff's fascinating month-long quest to disappear without a digital trace, many of the essays gathered here register our intense and complicated fascination with digital media. But as Dibbell notes, these essays also remind us that some of the most disruptive and fascinating technologies continue to come from beyond the digital world. Jill Lepore's writing on the politics of breast-feeding gadgetry, Stephen Silberman's investigation of the placebo effect in pharmaceutical testing, Burkhard Bilger reporting on efforts to build a better cook stove for the developing world, and Tad Friend's profile of electric-car developer Elon Musk's efforts to head off environmental catastrophe all invite us to reflect on how many aspects of human experience remain fundamentally unchanged by digital technology. Packed with marvelous essays on technologies old and new, The Best Technology Writing 2010 is an outstanding addition to this "fantastic" (Cory Doctorow), "fascinating" (Chris Anderson) series. The Best Technology Writing 2010 includes essays written by: Sam Anderson Burkhard Bilger Joshua Bearman Mark Bowden David Carr Douglas Fox Tad Friend Ben Greenman Vanessa Grigoriadis James Harkin Adam Higginbotham Alex Hutchinson Steven Johnson Kevin Kelly Jill Lepore Alexis Madrigal Javier Marias Mike Massimino Evan Ratliff Daniel Roth Clay Shirky Steve Silberman Annie Trubek Lawrence Weschler

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

Vanish

Why We Tweet

Baby Food

Thinking Machine

David Hockney's iPhone Passion

Airships

Naked Truth

Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable

Do You Own Facebook? Or Does Facebook Own You?

The Answer Factory

Hearth Surgery

The Inkjet Counterfeiter

Handwriting Is History

In Defense of Distraction

A Crime of Shadows

Global Impositioning Systems

Plugged In

Caught in the Net

Telegraphs Ran on Electric Air in Crazy 1859 Magnetic Storm

Technophilia

Can D.I.Y. Supplant the First-Person Shooter?

The Placebo Problem

The Fall and Rise of Media

Tweet from Space

About the Contributors

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

ISBN:

9780300165654

030016565X

OCLC:

808346470