Every day hundreds of thousands of websites are created and the number of unique Internet users is up in the billions. Our collective addiction to Facebook and Google is such that the brands have now become action verbs. When you have questions, Google (almost) always has the answer. The nearly
What does an 18th-century English minister have in common with such modern innovations as e-mail spam filters, Google searches, and even Clippy, the iconic (and sometimes reviled) paperclip-shaped Microsoft Office Assistant? In The Theory That Would Not Die, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne depicts the quiet birth and controversial coming of age
Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the Federal Communications Commission cannot prevent Internet service providers from striking deals with content providers to provide preferential access and services to consumers who pay for these benefits. This means that a company like Verizon can
Who rules how Facebook connects more than nine hundred million monthly users, some 80 percent outside of the United States? Facebook, now connecting one tenth of all humanity, has become its own nation, complete with currency and international diplomats. To achieve citizenship, all a person must do is share the
Books, often carriers of cultural history, also have a cultural history of their own. The book has played a different role in each culture and era. The Book in the Renaissance, by Andrew Pettegree, examines the first 150 years after the invention of print. As it were, books played more
As a messy election unfolds in Iran, details of the situation have been broadcast throughout the world not only by the mainstream news media, but also by Iranian citizens who are members of social networking sites such as Twitter. Iranian officials have tried to block the flow of information, first