The Best Social Aspect Books 2024

1. The Tyranny of E-mail : The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox (Hardcover)

The award-winning former president of the National Book Critics Circle traces a short history of people's need for correspondence and examines the astonishing growth of e-mail--how it is changing lives, but not always for the better. The award-winning president of the National Book Critics Circle examines the astonishing growth of email--and how it is changing our lives, not always for the better. John Freeman is one of America's pre-eminent literary critics; now in this, his first book, he presents an elegant and erudite investigation into a technology that has revolutionized the way we work, communicate, and even think. There's no question that email is an explosive phenomenon. The first email, developed for military use, was sent less than forty years ago; by 2011, there will be 3.2 billion users. The average corporate employee now receives upwards of 130 emails per day; by 2009 that number is expected to reach nearly 200. And the flood of messages is ceaseless: for increasing numbers of people, email means work now occupies home time as well as office hours. Drawing extensively on the research of linguists, behavioral scientists, cultural critics, and philosophers, Freeman examines the way email is taking a mounting toll on a variety of behavior, reducing time for leisure and contemplation, despoiling subtlety and expression in language, and separating us from each other in the unending and lonely battle with the overfull inbox. He enters a plea for communication which is slower, more nuanced, and, above all, more sociable.

The award-winning president of the National Book Critics Circle examines the astonishing growth of email—and how it is changing our lives, not always for the better. John Freeman is one of America’s pre-eminent literary critics; now in this, his first book, he presents an elegant and erudite investigation into a technology that has revolutionized the way we work, communicate, and even think. There’s no question that email is an explosive phenomenon. The first email, developed for military use, was sent less than forty years ago; by 2011, there will be 3.2 billion users. The average corporate employee now receives upwards of 130 emails per day; by 2009 that number is expected to reach nearly 200. And the flood of messages is ceaseless: for increasing numbers of people, email means work now occupies home time as well as office hours. Drawing extensively on the research of linguists, behavioral scientists, cultural critics, and philosophers, Freeman examines the way email is taking a mounting toll on a variety of behavior, reducing time for leisure and contemplation, despoiling subtlety and expression in language, and separating us from each other in the unending and lonely battle with the overfull inbox. He enters a plea for communication which is slower, more nuanced, and, above all, more sociable.

2. Fluency with Information Technology, Pre-Owned (Paperback)

Pre-Owned -

Fluency with Information Technology, Pre-Owned (Paperback)

3. Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

Pre-Owned - With Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives, new media pioneer Randi Zuckerberg offers an entertaining and essential guide to understanding how technology and social media influence and inform our lives online and off.Zuckerberg has been on the frontline of the social media movement since Facebook's early days and her following six years as a marketing executive for the company. Her part memoir, part how-to manual addresses issues of privacy, online presence, networking, etiquette, and the future of social change.

Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

4. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity, Pre-Owned (Paperback)

Pre-Owned - 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.

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity, Pre-Owned (Paperback)

5. Computers, Ethics, and Society, Used [Paperback]

In today's world, computers can have complex and contradictory effects on human life. They can enhance our quality of life by creating access to previously unimagined worlds. On the other hand, as computers become increasingly important in our everyday lives, their potential to strip away our privacy and autonomy increases exponentially. Computers, Ethics, and Society , now in its third edition, offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary set of readings on the ethical and social implications of computer technology. Taking into account technological, social, and philosophical issues, the contributors consider topics such as the work-related ramifications of automation, the ethical obligations of computer specialists, and the threats to privacy that come with increased computerization. Thoroughly up-to-date in its coverage, this collection includes articles on specific ethical dilemmas related to contemporary issues and events. Essays new to the third edition cover such topics as cyber-terrorism, the ethics of downloading music from Internet sites, and the question of whether human beings may someday be "replaced" by artificial intelligence and computer technology. An ideal text for sociology, philosophy, and computer science courses, Computers, Ethics, and Society, 3/e , reminds students that although technology has the potential to improve or undermine our quality of life, societal forces ultimately have the power to decide how computers will affect our lives.

Computers, Ethics, and Society, Used [Paperback]

6. The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. In The Second Self, Sherry Turkle looks at the computer not as a "tool," but as part of our social and psychological lives; she looks beyond how we use computer games and spreadsheets to explore how the computer affects our awareness of ourselves, of one another, and of our relationship with the world. "Technology," she writes, "catalyzes changes not only in what we do but in how we think." First published in 1984, The Second Self is still essential reading as a primer in the psychology of computation. This twentieth anniversary edition allows us to reconsider two decades of computer culture-to (re)experience what was and is most novel in our new media culture and to view our own contemporary relationship with technology with fresh eyes. Turkle frames this classic work with a new introduction, a new epilogue, and extensive notes added to the original text. Turkle talks to children, college students, engineers, AI scientists, hackers, and personal computer owners-people confronting machines that seem to think and at the same time suggest a new way for us to think-about human thought, emotion, memory, and understanding. Her interviews reveal that we experience computers as being on the border between inanimate and animate, as both an extension of the self and part of the external world. Their special place betwixt and between traditional categories is part of what makes them compelling and evocative. In the introduction to this edition, Turkle quotes a PDA user as saying, "When my Palm crashed, it was like a death. I thought I had lost my mind." Why we think of the workings of a machine in psychological terms-how this happens, and what it means for all of us-is the ever more timely subject of The Second Self. Book jacket.

The Second Self : Computers and the Human Spirit, Used [Paperback]

7. Making Use: Scenario-Based Design of Human-Computer Interactions, Used [Hardcover]

Difficult to learn and awkward to use, today's information systems often change our lives in ways that we do not need or want. The problem lies in the software development process. In this book John Carroll shows how a pervasive but underused element of design practice, the scenario, can transform information systems design.

Making Use: Scenario-Based Design of Human-Computer Interactions, Used [Hardcover]

8. Silicon Valley Fever [Hardcover - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Pages clean and unmarked. Slight wear from time on shelf like you would see on a major chain. Immediate shipping.

Silicon Valley Fever, Used [Hardcover]

9. Stranger in the Chat Room, Used [Paperback]

Following life-changing interactions with God in an Internet chat room, a group of teens disperse for the summer. As they reconnect, an intriguing character invades their supposedly private domain. Claiming to know about their encounters with the Almighty, he asks to talk about their experiences. The friends soon find him challenging their beliefs. As the teens defend themselves against this increasingly malevolent interloper, they must draw on the truth they have learned from God?s Word. A modern-day Screwtape Letters for young adults.

Stranger in the Chat Room, Used [Paperback]

10. Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Virginia Heffernan "melds the personal with the increasingly universal in a highly informative analysis of what the Internet is--and can be. A thoroughly engrossing examination of the Internet's past, present, and future" ( Kirkus Reviews , starred review) from one of the best living writers of English prose. This book makes a bold claim: The Internet is among mankind's great masterpieces--a massive work of art. As an idea, it rivals monotheism. But its cultural potential and its societal impact often elude us. In this deep and thoughtful book, Virginia Heffernan reveals the logic and aesthetics behind the Internet, just as Susan Sontag did for photography and Marshall McLuhan did for television. Life online, in the highly visual, social, portable, and global incarnation rewards certain virtues. The new medium favors speed, accuracy, wit, prolificacy, and versatility, and its form and functions are changing how we perceive, experience, and understand the world. In "sumptuous writing, saturated with observations that are simultaneously personal, cultural, and strikingly original" ( The New Republic ), Heffernan presents "a revealing look at how the Internet continues to reshape our lives emotionally, visually, and culturally" ( The Smithsonian Magazine ). " Magic and Loss is an illuminating guide to the Internet...it is impossible to come away from this book without sharing some of Heffernan's awe for this brave new world" ( The Wall Street Journal ).

Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art, Used [Paperback]