Answer: They're all examined in Reinventing Technology, Rediscovering Community: Critical Explorations of Computing as a Social Practice, an exciting new book about the social implications of computing -- NOW available!

Within the briefest historical moment computer technology has found its way into nearly every aspect of modern life. Since 1987, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) has hosted conferences on the "Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing" (DIAC), to explore this phenomenon. From those conferences, Internet activists Phil Agre ("The Network Observer") and Doug Schuler ("New Community Networks: Wired for Change") have collected many of the DIAC papers (and several others) into a significant new book.

This book provides new and powerful ways of thinking about the role of computers in our lives. It contains pioneering work on some of the most provocative themes in computing including the sometimes disastrous use of advanced computing in weapons systems, the intriguing new world of computer MUD environments, Virtual Reality, women's knowledge, the usefulness of computers in schools, and the new community (computer) networks such as Berkeley's "Community Memory," the world's first such system.

The book contains critical studies of people using computers as well as constructive studies that provide insight into the processes of technological diffusion and new ways of building systems. The book's overriding theme, one that all the contributors in this book address, is "How is computer technology changing the way in which we relate to the world and to each other, and what, if anything, should we do about it?"

This volume is required reading for students and, in fact, for anybody who is compelled and/or repelled by humankind's sudden and profound embrace of computing and communication technology.

CONTENTS:

• Computing as a Social Practice, Philip E. Agre
• Reading "All About" Computerization: How Genre Conventions Shape Non-Fiction Social Analysis, Rob Kling
• Questions to Ask and Techno-Fallacies to Avoid in the Consideration of New Information Technologies, Gary T. Marx
• Knowledge in Production, Jim Davis and Michael Stack
• Moral Issues Involved in Protecting Software as Intellectual Property, Natalie Dandekar
• "Virtual Reality" -- Really?, Thomas B. Sheridan and David Zeltzer
• Computerization and Women's Knowledge, Lucy Suchman and Brigitte Jordan
• Thinking about Computers and Schools: A Skeptical View, Hank Bromley
• Artificial Intelligence at War: An Analysis of the Aegis System in Combat, Chris Hables Gray
• Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities, Pavel Curtis
• Cyberspace Innkeeping: Building Online Community, John Coate
• Community Networks: Building a New Participatory Medium, Douglas Schuler
• Community Memory: A Case Study in Community Communication, Carl Farrington and Evelyn Pine
• The Rainbow Pages: Building Technology with Voice Technology, Paul Resnick and Mel King
• Building Community Networks, Philip E. Agre
• Affectionate Technology, David Durlach

(Valid only on individual orders received before September 15, 1997 on
this form)

          Special Conference Prices -- Cloth: $40.00; Paper: $25.00

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