ZDNet UK Book Reviews

Twenty-five years ago the term 'hacker' didn't mean a cybercriminal, and the few who used it meant it as high praise. When Hackers first came out in 1984, Steven Levy was documenting how thirty years of brilliant and eccentric geeks (who were more interested in bending technology to their will than in building businesses, or even in what computers can actually do) had somehow produced a personal computer revolution that was about to sweep into every home.

September 7, 2010 by Book Reviews

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My junior high school maths teacher, Nancy Rosenberg, often talked about her desire to illustrate basic principles of geometry via animated cartoons. She thought explaining points, lines, and angles would be more direct and intuitive if you could just show, for example, a line approaching, intersecting and then retreating from a circle.

August 25, 2010 by Book Reviews

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In the early to mid 1990s it was fashionable to compare the unformed, open spaces of the internet to the 19th century American West: the 'electronic frontier'. Tabloid journalists liked to call the internet lawless and uncontrolled; pioneers preferred to call it uncontrollable.

June 30, 2010 by Book Reviews

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It's almost humorous to remember now how terrified everyone seemed to be in the early 1990s of the mostly harmless 'dark-side hackers' of the era. The most famous of these was undoubtedly Kevin Mitnick, whose 1995 capture formed the basis of no less than three books.

May 24, 2010 by Book Reviews

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Anywhere is big. Really big. You just won't believe how mind-bogglingly big it is.

April 27, 2010 by Book Reviews

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Every decade (which means every two or three years in internet time) has its internet rethinker. This year it's virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier and You Are Not a Gadget.

March 23, 2010 by Book Reviews

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I have a recurring dream that goes like this: I am running somewhere — anywhere — and I never run out of breath or get tired. It feels wonderful.

March 11, 2010 by Book Reviews

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The city of Topeka — the capital of Kansas — has renamed itself 'Google' for the month of March 2010, hoping to draw the company's notice so it will be chosen for fibre optics trials that Google has said it will start soon. This event had not, of course, happened when New Yorker business writer Ken Auletta finished work on Googled, but it's a sign of the times that even the home of the Wizard of Oz can't escape the playschool-coloured arm of the white-paged search giant.

March 10, 2010 by Book Reviews

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You'd have thought there couldn't possibly be anything sufficiently complicated about typing 140-character messages to warrant writing a book about how to do it, but at least three people think you're wrong.Tim O'Reilly (http://twitter.

March 9, 2010 by Book Reviews

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If we want the internet to stay open and free, we need users to be as active and engaged as in the early days, rather than passive consumers, says Jonathan Zittrain.

July 30, 2009 by Wendy M Grossman

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