CSCI 494: Books for Review

Last modified: Thu Feb 21 15:31:43 CST 2008

Listed here you will find the books that have been selected this semester, plus others of which I am aware (many of which have been reviewed by students in previous semesters).

In the following lists, * indicates books that I have a copy of in my office, (probably currently in the Brandt room), @ those that are listed as being in the college library.

Note: I'm limiting the AI books (Brooks, Clark) to one reviewer each. Most of the others will be limited to two reviewers per author.

Selections for this term:

@*Rodney Brooks, Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us

Joe Hayward

@*Simson Garfinkel, Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century

David Niehls

@*Lawrence Lessig, Code, and Other Laws of Cyberspace

Nate Powell

@*Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet

David Briggs

@*Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason

Tyler Fulton

Highly recommended books:

@*Albert Borgmann, Holding On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium

@Lawrence Lessig, The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World

@*Theodore Roszak, The Cult of Information

@*Steve Talbott, The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst

Also recommended:

Newly published:

Other books that might be suitable, but have not been reviewed:

Avi Rubin, Brave New Ballot

*Stephen Talbott, Devices of the Soul: Battling for Ourselves in an Age of Machines

Sherry Turkle, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit

The following might be a good choice, but I've blacklisted it (again) for this year:

@*Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

These rated OK, but not outstanding:

@*J. David Bolter, Turing's Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age

Andy Clark, Natural-born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence

@Charles Jonscher, The Evolution of Wired Life: From the Alphabet to the Soul-Catcher Chip-How Information Technologies Change Our World

@*Gregory Rawlins, Slaves of the Machine: The Quickening of Computer Technology

Douglas Robertson, The New Renaissance: Computers and the Next Level of Civilization

@Gene Rochlin, Trapped in the Net: The Unanticipated Consequences of Computerization

Andrew L. Shapiro, The Control Revolution: How the Internet is Putting Individuals in Charge and Changing the World We Know

These have been done previously, but were judged weak choices:

@*Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence

@Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital

Pekka Himanen and Linus Torvalds, The Hacker Ethic

@Clifford Stoll, Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway

You can easily find lots of other potentially interesting books by searching book reviews.