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The recurring metaphor in The Inmates are Running the Asylum is that of the dancing bear--the circus bear that shuffles clumsily for the amusement of the audience. Such bears, says author Alan Cooper, don't dance well, as everyone at the circus can see. What amazes the crowd is that the bear dances at all. Cooper argues that technology (videocassette recorders, car alarms, most software applications for personal computers) consists largely of dancing bears--pieces that work, but not at all well. He goes on to say that this is more often than not the fault of poorly designed user interfaces, and he makes a good argument that way too many devices (perhaps as a result of the designers' subconscious wish to bully the people who tormented them as children) ask too much of their users. Too many systems (like the famous unprogrammable VCR) make their users feel stupid when they can't get the job done.
Cooper, who designed Visual Basic (the programming environment Microsoft promotes for the purpose of creating good user interfaces), indulges in too much name-dropping and self-congratulation (Cooper attributes the quote, "How did you do that?" to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, upon looking at one of Cooper's creations)--but this appears to be de rigueur in books about the software industry. But those asides are minor. More valuable is the discourse about software design and implementation ("[O]bject orientation divides the 1000-brick tower into 10 100-brick towers."). Read this book for an idea of what's wrong with UI design. --David Wall
Topics covered: User interfaces--good ones and bad ones--and where they come from. Also, how to improve the ones you create.
Book Description
Imagine, at a terrifyingly aggressive rate, everything you regularly use is being equipped with computer technology. Think about your phone, cameras, cars-everything-being automated and programmed by people who in their rush to accept the many benefits of the silicon chip, have abdicated their responsibility to make these products easy to use.
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum argues that the business executives who make the decisions to develop these products are not the ones in control of the technology used to create them. Insightful and entertaining,
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum uses the author's experiences in corporate America to illustrate how talented people continuously design bad software-based products and why we need technology to work the way average people think. Somewhere out there is a happy medium that makes these types of products both user and bottom-line friendly; this book discusses why we need to quickly find that medium.
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Imagine, at a terrifyingly aggressive rate, everything you regularly use is being equipped with computer technology. Think about your phone, cameras, cars - everything - being automated and programmed by people who in their rush to accept the many benefits of the silicon chip, have abdicated their responsibility to make these products easy to use. The Inmates are Running the Asylum argues that, despite appearances, business executives are simply not the ones in control of the high-tech industry. They have inadvertently put programmers and engineers in charge, leading to products and processes that waste money, squander customer loyalty, and erode competitive advantage. Business executives have let the inmates run the asylum! In his book The Inmates Are Running the Asylum Alan Cooper calls for revolution - we need technology to work in the same way average people think - we need to restore the sanity. He offers a provocative, insightful and entertaining explanation of how talented people continuously design bad software-based products. More importantly, he uses his own work with companies big and small to show how to harness those talents to create products that will both thrill their users and grow the bottom line.
Customer Reviews:
No Cognitive Friction Here.. .......2007-06-12
Alan Cooper gives the reader insight into why so many of today's technological products frustrate and confuse users. Yet he goes past this to discuss a methodology for keeping it simple and designing for the user i.e. avoiding cognitive friction. This book has changed the way I will develop products and should be a must read for product managers of application developers. Just learning Mr. Cooper's vocabulary is worth the read. The ideas such as personas, keywords, and designing for an individual push the book way above average. This is an easy read that should be done in your spare time if you want to avoid cognitive friction with your users. It has changed the way I view technology and brought a new awareness to thoughtless technology implementation which often cause failure or misuse. The only reason I gave this book a 4 out of 5 as I feel it could have been reduced a little bit more, certain points I felt like the author was rambling about personal fustrations.
an essential handbook for designing software.......2007-06-11
Cooper's argument in this book is simple: you have to know your users, and you have to understand what they're trying to accomplish with your software. The method that he puts forth for achieving this understanding is personas, richly-described archetypical users.
The book is easy to read and understand. He begins with a detailed description of the problem with software design as carried about by programmers who can only imagine themselves as the users of their software, resulting in software that makes really difficult things possible but doesn't bother to make easy or common things quick and easy.
After making the argument that programmers shouldn't design interfaces and making the case both for usability and interaction design, he lays out the personas concept. Cooper's guidelines for creating personas and using them are well-written and well-thought-out. However, his examples of applying them to some of his own customers are rather repetitive, and sometimes come across as somewhat whiny.
Now that it's time for my group at Microsoft to revisit our personas and determine what needs to be tweaked for our next version, I decided that I should revisit the book that first advanced the idea. It has stood up well to the test of time (something that not many computer books can do). I highly recommend it, both to usability and design professionals, as well as programmers.
Great writing, very illustrative examples, definitely not a detailed how-to.......2007-05-13
The strength of this book its clear and easy-to-read writing. Cooper's examples are instructive and the theory of why design-centric business approaches are the most powerful. It's supposed to be a business-case book but I'm quite sure all programmers and even designers would find the read very worthwhile.
My only wish for the book would be that Chapter 10 onwards seemed to be the really exciting stuff, detailing the how more than the why of design-centric approaches. This part feels like a rushed summary in comparison the the attention paid to the why aspect in the rest of the book. You may want to consider Cooper's newly revised "how" book although it is mainly a designer's handbook: About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design
I'm not done with that About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design but I'm starting to worry it's going to leave me wishing it had more specific methodologies as opposed to theories. Of course, it has much more methodological attention than The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity (2nd Edition) and there's no fault in what is written, only in what is omitted.
If you're really looking for the ultimate how-to, you might want to consider attending the four-day "Cooper U". Case in point: I had the chance to ask Alan Cooper where I could learn more about how to create the design documents he writes about in the last part of The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity (2nd Edition) and he really couldn't say what books would be able to instruct that (including his own) and that it would be covered in his course.
this book changed my life.......2007-02-22
I was a well-paid systems administrator/help desk guy until I read this book. This book really did inspire me to change careers!
The book basically outlines why engineers (and people who think like engineers) are INCAPABLE of designing effective interfaces. It delves into specifics and supplies some great examples.
I am amused by some of the reviewers here who display the same sort of arrogant contempt that the book outlines. OF COURSE programming a VCR is easy for YOU--you're a person with an "engineer mind". My mom can't program a VCR at all, and that's not because she didn't try hard enough or read the instructions. She can't use it because everything about it's interface is counter-intuitive to someone who does not understand machine/code logic.
Just because it's easy for you doesn't mean it doesn't stink. Just because it makes sense to you doesn't mean it can't be made better--to work intuitively for "regular" people. Buy this book. Read it. Demand more from your products. It's time to end the insanity.
Blown out of proportion.......2007-01-18
It's true that some products have poor interfaces, but in my experience this "problem" is blown way out of proportion with reality. The only people I know who couldn't figure out how to program their VCRs were people who did not try for more than 5 minutes. Read the instructions, both in the book and onscreen, and VCR programming is a snap, from the earliest models to today.
I think the real question should be: Why are so many users so lazy? This is more of a social problem than a technological one. Some think that if any effort is required to learn how to use a new device then it's poorly designed. Poppycock!
Average customer rating:
- Was expecting more
- Great start on the subject
- A Serious Economic & Sociological Analysis of Game Playing
- n00bs read this!
- Eh...alright
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Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games
Edward Castronova
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
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ASIN: 0226096270 |
Book Description
From EverQuest to World of Warcraft, online games have evolved from the exclusive domain of computer geeks into an extraordinarily lucrative staple of the entertainment industry. People of all ages and from all walks of life now spend thousands of hours—and dollars—partaking in this popular new brand of escapism. But the line between fantasy and reality is starting to blur. Players have created virtual societies with governments and economies of their own whose currencies now trade against the dollar on eBay at rates higher than the yen. And the players who inhabit these synthetic worlds are starting to spend more time online than at their day jobs.
In Synthetic Worlds, Edward Castronova offers the first comprehensive look at the online game industry, exploring its implications for business and culture alike. He starts with the players, giving us a revealing look into the everyday lives of the gamers—outlining what they do in their synthetic worlds and why. He then describes the economies inside these worlds to show how they might dramatically affect real world financial systems, from potential disruptions of markets to new business horizons. Ultimately, he explores the long-term social consequences of online games: If players can inhabit worlds that are more alluring and gratifying than reality, then how can the real world ever compete? Will a day ever come when we spend more time in these synthetic worlds than in our own? Or even more startling, will a day ever come when such questions no longer sound alarmist but instead seem obsolete?
With more than ten million active players worldwide—and with Microsoft and Sony pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into video game development—online games have become too big to ignore. Synthetic Worlds spearheads our efforts to come to terms with this virtual reality and its concrete effects.
“Illuminating. . . . Castronova’s analysis of the economics of fun is intriguing. Virtual-world economies are designed to make the resulting game interesting and enjoyable for their inhabitants. Many games follow a rags-to-riches storyline, for example. But how can all the players end up in the top 10%? Simple: the upwardly mobile human players need only be a subset of the world's population. An underclass of computer-controlled 'bot' citizens, meanwhile, stays poor forever. Mr. Castronova explains all this with clarity, wit, and a merciful lack of academic jargon.”—The Economist
“Synthetic Worlds is a surprisingly profound book about the social, political, and economic issues arising from the emergence of vast multiplayer games on the Internet. What Castronova has realized is that these games, where players contribute considerable labor in exchange for things they value, are not merely like real economies, they are real economies, displaying inflation, fraud, Chinese sweatshops, and some surprising in-game innovations.”—Tim Harford, Chronicle of Higher Education
Customer Reviews:
Was expecting more.......2007-05-27
To be honest I was expecting more on this book.It didnt tell all the info I wanted to know and the author focus too much on 2D games like Everquest and not so much in 3D games like Second Life.In most of the book the author is a little superficial in his analysis,he could go deeper.However the book is good for people who wanna have a general idea about on line games,specially Everquest,World of Warcraft and Star Wars.
Great start on the subject.......2007-05-07
Best book discussing online worlds that I've read.
The author's background in economics makes for an interesting perspective. He goes to great lengths to point out where and how virtual worlds cross over into the "real" world.
He doesn't, however, take things quite as far as I expected. For instance, he doesn't suggest that any interaction, social or otherwise, if conducted online might well be considered as having occurred in a virtual world. And he doesn't spend any effort exploring online to offline gestural equivalence.
But I don't think he can be faulted. There's enough material in this area to fill several volumes. What he does cover, he makes accessible, interesting, and relevant.
[...]
A Serious Economic & Sociological Analysis of Game Playing.......2007-03-19
This book survey's the landscape of online game playing and its impact on business, law, politics, social behavior, etc. If you are looking for a comprehensive analysis, Synthetic Worlds provides a thoughtful and accessible option.
Oddly, for a 300 page book, my version had a very small font size. If you suffer from eye strain, you may want to make sure the type is suitable for you.
n00bs read this!.......2007-02-09
This is a great starting point for the investigation of synthetic economies. Wether you are an econ n00b or a gamer n00b, you'll be at leest semi uber by the end.
Eh...alright.......2006-11-10
it's good for what it is, though the author writes it as a term paper for college "This is what the chapter is about..." exactly like that. Lots of dryness there, lots of facts. It's also mostly focused on the Economy of and existing in MMO, not so much the culture people are thinking of (dating, avatars selection, gender bending, etc.) or how MMO's are ran as a buisness.
Book Description
Is there a significant difference in attitude between immersion in a game and immersion in a movie or novel? What are the new possibilities for representation offered by the emerging technology of virtual reality? As Marie-Laure Ryan demonstrates in Narrative as Virtual Reality, the questions raised by new, interactive technologies have their precursors and echoes in pre-electronic literary and artistic traditions. Formerly a culture of immersive ideals--getting lost in a good book, for example--we are becoming, Ryan claims, a culture more concerned with interactivity. Approaching the idea of virtual reality as a metaphor for total art, Narrative as Virtual Reality applies the concepts of immersion and interactivity to develop a phenomenology of reading.
Ryan's analysis encompasses both traditional literary narratives and the new textual genres made possible by the electronic revolution of the past few years, such as hypertext, interactive movies and drama, digital installation art, and computer role-playing games. Interspersed among the book's chapters are several "interludes" that focus exclusively on either key literary texts that foreshadow what we now call "virtual reality," including those of Baudelaire, Huysmans, Ignatius de Loyola, Calvino, and science-fiction author Neal Stephenson, or recent efforts to produce interactive art forms, like the hypertext "novel" Twelve Blue, by Michael Joyce, and I'm Your Man, an interactive movie. As Ryan considers the fate of traditional narrative patterns in digital culture, she revisits one of the central issues in modern literary theory--the opposition between a presumably passive reading that is taken over by the world a text represents and an active, deconstructive reading that imaginatively participates in the text's creation.
Book Description
Cutting though the exaggerated and fanciful beliefs about the new possibilities of `net life', Hine produces a distinctive understanding of the significance of the net and addresses such questions as: what challenges do the new technologies of communication pose for research methods? Does the Internet force us to rethink traditional categories of `culture' and `society'? In this compelling and thoughtful book, Hine shows that the Internet is both a site for cultural formations and a cultural artefact which is shaped by people's understandings and expectations. The Internet requires a new form of ethnography. The author considers the shape of this new ethnography and guides readers through its application in multiple settings.
Book Description
View the
Table of Contents. Read the
Introduction.
"This is a spectacular collection of essays on the present and future of virtual worlds. It's a perfect introduction for those who have yet to experience them, and more important, a thoughtful companion for those who do."
—Jonathan Zittrain, Oxford University
"
The State of Play is an extremely comprehensive look into digital worlds and how those worlds are evolving cultures, changing lives, reshaping the way we think and communicate. If you want to understand where modern culture is headed and learn more about incredibly fascinating experiences taking place in virtual worlds, pick up and read this book now."
—Richard Garriott, a.k.a. Lord British, Creator of Ultima Online and Executive Producer, NCsoft
"These essays, by the best thinkers in their fields, will be read, debated, taught, and cited in court cases as we struggle to figure out how to live in a world which is part digital and part social, part real and part imaginary."
—Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide
”With diverse essays from game designers, social scientists and legal scholars,
The State of Play is a provocative consideration of virtual jurisprudence.”
—Paste Magazine
”For those who want to skip over the hype and dive into the issue, it is hard to imagine a better resource.”
—Cecily Deane Mak, Senior Counsel, Music at RealNetworks.
“Reading
The State of Play is an adventure. It is the first real step of a journey into the outer limits of the physical world and the inner realms of the virtual within the boundaries of society's comfort zone. It is an exploratory glimpse into how digital worlds may change the future, reshape our own reflection, and challenge real-world laws.”
—New York Law Journal
The State of Play presents an essential first step in understanding how new digital worlds will change the future of our universe. Millions of people around the world inhabit virtual words: multiplayer online games where characters live, love, buy, trade, cheat, steal, and have every possible kind of adventure. Far more complicated and sophisticated than early video games, people now spend countless hours in virtual universes like Second Life and Star Wars Galaxies not to shoot space invaders but to create new identities, fall in love, build cities, make rules, and break them.
As digital worlds become increasingly powerful and lifelike, people will employ them for countless real-world purposes, including commerce, education, medicine, law enforcement, and military training. Inevitably, real-world law will regulate them. But should virtual worlds be fully integrated into our real-world legal system or should they be treated as separate jurisdictions with their own forms of dispute resolution? What rules should govern virtual communities? Should the law step in to protect property rights when virtual items are destroyed or stolen?
These questions, and many more, are considered in
The State of Play, where legal experts, game designers, and policymakers explore the boundaries of free speech, intellectual property, and creativity in virtual worlds. The essays explore both the emergence of law in multiplayer online games and how we can use virtual worlds to study real-world social interactions and test real-world laws.
Contributors include: Jack M. Balkin, Richard A. Bartle, Yochai Benkler, Caroline Bradley, Edward Castronova, Susan P. Crawford, Julian Dibbell, A. Michael Froomkin, James Grimmelmann, David R. Johnson, Dan Hunter, Raph Koster, F. Gregory Lastowka, Beth Simone Noveck, Cory Ondrejka, Tracy Spaight, and Tal Zarsky.
Customer Reviews:
Bring on the Metaverse.......2007-01-12
Great book, interesting essays about where our digital lives are going.
Amazon.com
The title of this scholarly yet remarkably accessible slice of contemporary cultural history has a whiff of paradox about it: what can it mean, exactly, to say that we humans have become something other than human? The answer, Katherine Hayles explains, lies not in ourselves but in our tools. Ever since the invention of electronic computers five decades ago, these powerful new machines have inspired a shift in how we define ourselves both as individuals and as a species.
Hayles tracks this shift across the history of avant-garde computer theory, starting with Norbert Weiner and other early "cyberneticists," who were the first to systematically explore the similarities between living and computing systems. Hayles's study ends with artificial-life specialists, many of whom no longer even bother to distinguish between life forms and computers. Along the way she shows these thinkers struggling to reconcile their traditional, Western notions of human identity with the unsettling, cyborg directions in which their own work seems to be leading humanity.
This is more than just the story of a geek elite, however. Hayles looks at cybernetically inspired science fiction by the likes of Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, and Neal Stephenson to show how the larger culture grapples with the same issues that dog the technologists. She also draws lucidly on her own broad grasp of contemporary philosophy both to contextualize those issues and to contend with them herself. The result is a fascinating introduction--and a valuable addition--to one of the most important currents in recent intellectual history. --Julian Dibbell
Book Description
In this age of DNA computers and artificial intelligence, information is becoming disembodied even as the "bodies" that once carried it vanish into virtuality. While some marvel at these changes, envisioning consciousness downloaded into a computer or humans "beamed" Star Trek-style, others view them with horror, seeing monsters brooding in the machines. In How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles separates hype from fact, investigating the fate of embodiment in an information age.
Hayles relates three interwoven stories: how information lost its body, that is, how it came to be conceptualized as an entity separate from the material forms that carry it; the cultural and technological construction of the cyborg; and the dismantling of the liberal humanist "subject" in cybernetic discourse, along with the emergence of the "posthuman."
Ranging widely across the history of technology, cultural studies, and literary criticism, Hayles shows what had to be erased, forgotten, and elided to conceive of information as a disembodied entity. Thus she moves from the post-World War II Macy Conferences on cybernetics to the 1952 novel Limbo by cybernetics aficionado Bernard Wolfe; from the concept of self-making to Philip K. Dick's literary explorations of hallucination and reality; and from artificial life to postmodern novels exploring the implications of seeing humans as cybernetic systems.
Although becoming posthuman can be nightmarish, Hayles shows how it can also be liberating. From the birth of cybernetics to artificial life, How We Became Posthuman provides an indispensable account of how we arrived in our virtual age, and of where we might go from here.
Customer Reviews:
Hayles Forgets and Didn't do her research.......2007-05-02
Interesting how Ms. Hayles does not mention the transhuman or transhumanism, Max More and his seminal essay "Becoming Posthuman" written several years before Ms. Hayles book was published. Anyone using the book in their course work might want to think about this.
What is the Posthuman Future?.......2005-10-24
This is an important, impressive, and infuriating book that should be read by all those interested in the posthuman movement, the possibility of a cyborg future, and the nature of cyberspace. I agree with other reviewers that it is a penetrating analysis of the cultural revolution taking place in information and what it means for human (and posthuman) society. It is important as a powerful statement of the post-modern concern with embodiment and what that might portend for the future of humanity. It is impressive as a wide-ranging analysis of the inter-linkages of technology, culture, and the human body. It is infuriating because of the jargon-filled text and convoluted nature of the writing. That last criticism is one that is generic for post-modern works such as this, and certainly not a specific criticism of this book.
UCLA professor of English N. Katherine Hayles makes the case that the body (or lack thereof) is central to this posthuman future. She notes that the body is lost in the information age, as disembodied voices/knowledge/data came to dominate thinking about a posthuman evolutionary stage. She also explores the development of the concept of the cyborg, and what the merger of humans and machines might eventually come to mean. She undertakes the analysis through a series of case studies. One of the best of them is her chapter on the science fiction of Philip K. Dick, whose novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" was made into the classic feature film "Blade Runner." His obsession with artificial life, and by extension "real" life, consumed much of Dick's writing and has much to say about the essence of the posthuman.
The most challenging and interesting part of this book is Hayles argument that Homo sapiens as a species are endangered in ways we have never conceptualized. Hayles notes that the rise of artificial life will lead to the next stage of the evolution of life on Earth. "If the name of the game is processing information," she writes, "it is only a matter of time until intelligent machines replace us as our evolutionary heirs. Whether we decide to fight them or join them by becoming computers ourselves, the days of the human race are numbered" (p. 243). The author does not view this with serious trepidation. As her last sentence in the book states: "Although some current versions of the posthuman point toward the anti-human and the apocalyptic, we can craft others that will be conducive to the long-range survival of humans and of the other life-forms, biological and artificial, with whom we share the planet and ourselves" (p. 291).
I think Hayles would agree with the Borg's slogan, "resistance is futile," but not with the dystopian concept of the human future it offers.
REDEFINING WHAT HUMAN IS -- into the 22nd Century.......2003-07-20
Yes, this is 22nd Century thinking today. I was fortunate enough to meet the author at a LA FUTURISTS SOCIETY meeting where she was a guest speaker. She looks ordinary-- like a college professor-type, speaks clearly but her writing is the extraordinary talent. She combines humanism and science to see how virtual bodies and informatics are influencing how we live, work and love. One of those books that yearns for you to write in the margins and put your notes in the back. Pages and pages of notes on my copy. No one will share this copy, don't even ask!!!! Not an easy read but well worth the journey. I love to read books in hours or days but this one took weeks (in between other reading) and it was well worth every minute, hour, day spent. Perfect book for this summer when the MACHINES ARE TAKING OVER on our screens at movies and television. The crossover from cybernetics to literature is what is so fascinating. I can't begin to summarize all that I learned and all the questions that it brought up for me to seek out more info. Belongs on every science and literature teacher's shelf. One of the books they should require for every engineer and techie at the beginning of their careers. Make way for the future!!!!!
Too full of jargon for me.......2003-05-22
This is probably one of the hardest books I have ever read--with no background in either philosophy or cybernetics, much of what Hayles discusses is just plain incomprehensible. I also found it difficult to accept the idea of humans already being "post-human." If you are interested in deep philosophical writings on technology and the human condition, with links to literature, read this. If you don't really care about the post-human, skip it.
this book rules, her writing style is near impenetrable.......2003-02-11
This book is worth the effort. Or maybe all the effort you'll put into this triggers a cognitive dissonance reaction: I just spent 4 hours reading one chapter, so it must have been good. Right? Right?
This book is good, if only for her obvious reverence for the cyberpunk grandaddy PKD (Phil K Dick if you don't know already). Whether or not you accept her premise that we are already "posthuman" she considers her subject matter in a most interesting and relevent way, bringing in fiction that relates to the subject, as well as the history of computing and cybernetics (with some fun little anecdotes about the one and only Norbert Weiner). If you're a geek or into future-minded philosophy, pick this one up. She makes some convincing arguments, it just takes a good long while to decipher what those arguments actually are.
Book Description
The Banff Centre for the Arts has become synonymous for what's hot in the electronic arts, a place where professional artists come to produce new work and develop new skills. This book brings together critical essays along with artists' projects to explore the many issues raised by the creation of virtual environments and to provide a glimpse into worlds that have been much discussed but rarely seen.
The book opens with eleven essays that approach the social and cultural implications of cyberspace from the perspective of cultural studies, communications, art history, art criticism, English, and women's studies. These are followed by nine virtual environments (along with statements of what the artists are trying to accomplish in both theoretical and technical terms), created as part of the Art and Virtual Environments Project at the Banff Centre.
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ASIN: 1852334614 |
Book Description
Virtual reality technology has been developed commercially since the early 1990s but it is only recently, with the popularity of the internet, that it has become feasible to link many users simultaneously in shared virtual environments. This raises a number of interesting questions such as: what is the difference between face-to-face and avatar-to-avatar interaction? What patterns govern the formation of virtual communities? How does the appearance of the avatar change the nature of the communication? There has been much speculation about issues such as these but research is still at a relatively early stage. This is the first book to bring together work from relevant disciplines to form a reference guide for practitioners, students and researchers interested in how we interact in computer-generated environments. It contains contributions from most of the key people in this area (including Microsoft Research's Virtual Worlds Group) and presents their findings in a way which is accessible to readers who are new to this field or who come from related areas. It is divided into 2 parts; chapters 2-6 deal with internet-based virtual worlds which have been widely used by the public; chapters 7-10 deal with networked VR systems which have been primarily used in pilot studies and research. Some chapters take the viewpoint of a participant observer, whilst others take a more experimental approach and assess the results of relevant trials. This book will be essential reading for anyone involved in developing, using or researching virtual worlds, and will also be of interest to students on courses such as VR and Computer-mediated communication.
Amazon.com
Written by the man known as the First Citizen of the Internet, this book covers Rheingold's experiences with virtual communities. It starts off with his home community, The Well, out of Sausilito, CA, and makes its way through MUDs and beyond. No one understands the compelling strength of online community like Rheingold.
Book Description
Howard Rheingold has been called the First Citizen of the Internet. In this book he tours the "virtual community" of online networking. He describes a community that is as real and as much a mixed bag as any physical community -- one where people talk, argue, seek information, organize politically, fall in love, and dupe others. At the same time that he tells moving stories about people who have received online emotional support during devastating illnesses, he acknowledges a darker side to people's behavior in cyberspace. Indeed, contends Rheingold, people relate to each other online much the same as they do in physical communities.
Originally published in 1993, The Virtual Community is more timely than ever. This edition contains a new chapter, in which the author revisits his ideas about online social communication now that so much more of the world's population is wired. It also contains an extended bibliography.
Customer Reviews:
Not very honest.......2002-01-23
The virtual community is, in reality, at best a bunch of people disagreeing and regularly indulging in shark-like small group attacks. The WELL, of which Howard speaks so much, hounded one of its early members - Blair - to his death by suicide, a matter described, but not really examined with much thoroughness. Yes, he touches on flaming, but does not examine a deeper pattern of common harrasment, particularly of outliers. How Howard himself participated in this type of online gang harassment activity, not understanding the man, Blair, and discounting his claims out of hand is a quite interesting story. He touches on this, and gives an account, which would be acceptable in a personal autobiography. But to leave it where he does in a book purporting to be a seminal piece on virtual community is truly remarkably remiss. Since the record is all there, or was, it could have been given serious consideration.
The conflicting interests, and the commonly irresponsible behavior of people online - viciousness, gratuitous, undeserved nastiness, intellectual dishonesty - looking for targets to vent on is not explored as it should be. This is quite common outside of the world of flaming.
This book is a gloss piece, advertising for something that doesn't really exist as he claims. Howard, while a pleasant guy personally, does not show himself a deep thinker, and may not be much of an observer either. Nor is the author ready, willing or able to take on anything that is likely to upset the herd of which he has become something of a starring member. The story of virtual community is not such a very nice one in many ways.
The underside of the story of virtual community is a story of psychological denial, denial about a great deal. It is a story of in-groups and out-groups, and a good deal more, something which requires an anhtropologists eye, and someone with more nerve.
Go ahead and read this book. But understand that the book itself is evidence of the degree of denial which pervades the "virtual community".
Wrote the book on Virtual Communities.......2001-07-19
Howard Rheingold is the most important lens through which the entire culture of the Virtual Community and Virtual Environment dynamics should and can be seen. This book, in any of its print runs or versions, is essential for anyone who wants to understand contact between people who's only connection is online via computers.
A seminal 1992 work with update tacked on.......2001-07-03
Rheingold provides a comprehensive, broad sweeping portrayal of the virtual communities landscape, particularly as it was in the early 1990s. In particular, the book provides a fascinating history of the development of virtual communities from back in the 1960s. The many stories of the development of virtual communities and of life in virtual communities provide a rich account.
The books' style is more journalistic that academic. It reads something like an extended newspaper article, with some fine writing. The book concentrates mostly on a kind of anecdotal and human accounting with a smattering of theory and stuff thrown in. Howard Rheingold eloquently lays out many of the salient issues and does an excellent job of arguing for the importance of recognizing the growth of online social groups. Also, he provides an intriguing treatment of cultural issues. The depth and breadth of his experience with the medium is clearly evident.
Generally, book is more historical than theoretical or practical. Howard admits to wanting to popularize the notion of virtual communities, which he does effectively. But, there is little that would help you set up a virtual community or really understand why they work that way. His basis is more in his experience than in theory or rigorous research.
The original book has been widely commented on, so perhaps just two comments on the 2000 version are in order. First, the book seems a little dated. The new material for this new version seems mostly added in the last two chapters, leaving the preceding 10 tinged with the state of affairs in 1992, which was pre-web and pre- a large bit of corporate development of e-business and virtual communities on the web. Of course, most of the issues are still relevant, but one has to keep the age of the material in mind. Second, the new material, although comprehensive and certainly based on Howard's considerable experience, seems a little rushed. Howard qualifies this by saying it would need another book, but this leaves the book feeling like an older book with a lengthy afterward tacked on later.
Prophet of Electronic Power to the People.......2000-12-30
Everyone seems to miss what I think is the most important the point of Howard's book. First published in 1993 and now in the expanded edition, the bottom line on this book is that the Internet has finally made it possible for individuals to own the fruits of their own labor--the power has shifted from the industrial age aggregators of labor, capital, and hard resources to the individual knowledge workers. The virtual community is the social manifestation of this new access to one another, but the real revolution is manifested in the freedom that cyberspace makes possible--as John Perry Barlow has said, the Internet interprets censorship (including corporate attempts to "own" employee knowledge) as an outage, and *routes around it*. Not only are communities possible, but so also are short-term aggregations of interest, remote bartering, on the fly hiring of world-class experts at a fraction of their "physical presence price". If Howard's first big book, Tools for Thought, was the window on what is possible at the desktop, this book is the window on what is possible in cyberspace, transcending physical, legal, cultural, and financial barriers. This is not quite the watershed that The Communist Manifesto was, but in many ways this book foreshadowed all of the netgain, infinite wealth, and other electronic frontier books coming out of the fevered brains around Boston--a guy in Mill Valley wearing hand-painted cowboy boots was there long before those carpetbaggers (smile).
New expanded edition is forthcoming.......2000-05-12
This is a classic work on the development of online communities immediately before the advent of the World Wide Web. A new expanded edition with a terrific follow up chapter and expanded bibliography is due this fall from The MIT Press. A must read!
Average customer rating:
- EnterýInorganic Life
- An Excellent Introductory Text
- Annoying, boring
- Wonderful book for the rest of us.
- Not recommended
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Virtual Organisms: The Startling World of Artificial Life
Mark Ward
Manufacturer: Thomas Dunne Books
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Binding: Hardcover
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ARTIFICIAL LIFE
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Artificial Life: An Overview
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Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
ASIN: 031226691X |
Book Description
Harmless artificial life forms are on the loose on the Internet. Computer viruses and even robots are now able to evolve like their biological counterparts. Telecommunications companies are sending small packets of software to go forth and multiply to cope with ever-increasing telephone traffic. Protein-based computers are on the agenda, and a team in Japan is building an organic brain as clever as a kitten. Welcome to the startling world of Artificial Life.
Artificial Life scientists are taking inanimate materials such as computer software and robots and making them behave just like living organisms. In the process they are discovering much about what drives evolution and just what it means to say that something is alive. Virtual Organisms traces the origins of this field from the days when it was practiced by a few maverick scientists to the present and the current boom in Alife research.
Leading technology correspondent Mark Ward presents a fascinating survey of current ideas about the origins of life and the engines of evolution. Through interviews with leading developers of Artificial Life, and through his own compelling research, Ward shows how the convergence of technology with biology has enormous implications.
In an accessible, entertaining manner, Virtual Organisms reveals an unexplored avenue in predicting the future of Artificial Life , and whether new forms of Alife may be evolving beyond their designer's control.
Customer Reviews:
EnterýInorganic Life.......2002-10-15
This book is an interesting survey of progress in using intelligent computer programs like cellular automata to replace older, more rigid programs. Ward attempts to redefine life as the passing of information. He concludes that "the informational basis of life can be abstracted away from the bodies we find it in and lose nothing in the process."
He wants to attribute "life" to both organic and inorganic species, thus his title. He moves by steps to show that the quality of human life is no more special than the life of plants, birds, mammals, insects, algae and fish. Although man has advantages with manipulating symbols, other life forms are superior as receptors of smells (ants and dogs) and gravitational maps (salmon and migrating birds). Ward wants the reader to accept the idea that there is nothing any more special about human life than there is about ant life. In fact many of the Artificial Life programs were inspired by ant behavior. All life becomes a matter of processing information.
Most of the examples given were in the field of telecommunications, network switching. Parallels were drawn between the information passed in DNA replication and that passed by computer programs. The groups he discusses are endeavoring to breed software in an evolutionary manner analogous to breeding animal life. To his thinking a string of computer bits are agents analogous to a string of amino acids in the chromosome of living agents-interesting ideas.
An Excellent Introductory Text.......2001-12-05
I have to disagree with many of the other reviewers that have commented on this text as I feel that it provides an excellent introduction to the field of Artificial Life. Any reader who picks up a 'penguin' style softback book with a jazzy cover running to no more than a couple of hundred pages and expects entensive algorthmic listings has little or no experience of printed IT literature. Bearing in mind the limitations imposed upon the author by the parameters of this work, this text provides an excellent theoretical perpective of the field free from the restrictive and time consuming portrayal of endless lines of coding that some reviewers would prefer to see. This is not a technical manual and does not purport to be, it is an excellent introductory text designed for those who use computers and are not used by them.
Annoying, boring.......2001-05-18
The first entire chapter is just an annoying and unconvincing lecture on evolution that has, from what I can see, nothing to do with the book. The rest seems to be nothing but a history lecture on the people that researched and developed the concepts of digital DNA, cellular automa (Like Conway's game of life) etc... The history was mildly amusing, but without getting very technical, the author lost my intrest soon.
Wonderful book for the rest of us........2001-05-15
Another book from an English writer that covers the subject of information in living organisms. This follows on the subject covered in "The Bit and the Pendulum" about the DNA and RNA using digital code in the process of reproduction. Nerds are not invited to read the book. English writers seem to stay away from the Hype and let us in on Memes and Genes and present research on psychology in a methodical manner that references wide ranging thinking and writing such as this one does.
Not recommended.......2001-01-05
The book description states, "...Mark Ward presents a fascinating survey..." but the book does not even come close to remotely interesting. The cover art, title, and book description are the highlights of this book, anything beyond that is an extremely dry read.
I am surprised that such an interesting subject could be transformed into such a boring lecture. The first 60 pages is dedicated to a tedious review of basic evolution which has become common knowledge. Only later, after losing the readers' interest, does Ward begin to tie this in with the actual subject of the book, artificial life. Yet even when he gets to artificial life, programming codes are not included in the book, so don't even think about it. It's as if Ward were a humanities major writing an extremely tiresome thesis on artificial life.
The only saving grace is the actual subject--even Ward cannot completely dampen the fascinating experiments with his stilted prose. Someone interested in doing a book report on the history of organismal life to artificial life may want to give Ward a try--anyone else familiar with the subject of A life should avoid this book.
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