Focusing on issues such as the nature of prediction, community, citizenship, consumption, and the nation, as well as the metaphors that have shaped public debates about technology, this title examines innovations in technology, from the telegraph and the portable television to the Internet.

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Technological Visions and the Rhetoric of the New - Marita Sturken and Douglas Thomas1. "Spinning" Technology: What We Are Not Thinking about When We Are Thinking about Computers - Sherry Turkle2. Sow's Ears from Silk Purses: The Strange Alchemy of Technological Visionaries - Langdon Winner3. Mediums and Media - Jeffrey Sconce4. Mobilities of Time and Space: Technologies of the Modern and the Postmodern - Marita Sturken5. Man-made Futures, Man-made Pasts - Lord Asa Briggs6. Portable TV: Studies in Domestic Space Travels - Lynn Spigel7. Science Fiction Film and the Technological Imagination - Vivian Sobchack8. Technological Prediction: A Promethean Problem - David E. Nye9. The Future of Prediction - John Perry Barlow10. Penguins, Predictions, and Technological Optimism: A Skeptic's View - Wendy M. Grossman11. Information Superhighways, Virtual Communities, and Digital Libraries: Information Society Metaphors as Political Rhetoric - Peter Lyman12. Rethinking the Cyberbody: Hackers, Viruses, and Cultural Anxiety - Douglas Thomas13. Peaceable Kingdoms and New Information Technologies: Prospects for the Nation-State - Carolyn Marvin14. Somewhere There's a Place for Us: Sexual Minorities and the Internet - Larry Gross15. Surfin' the Net: Children, Parental Obsolescence, and Citizenship - Sarah Banet-Weiser16. When the Virtual Isn't Enough - Katie Hafner17. Place Matters: Journeys through Global and Local Spaces - Richard Chabr'an and Romelia Salinas18. The Globalization of Everyday Life: Vision and Reality - Jennifer Gibbs, Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach, Joo-Young Jung, Yong-Chan Kim, and Jack Linchaun QiuAbout the ContributorsIndex

"Telescreens. Virtual communities. Wired cities. Information societies. The World Wide Web. Concepts like these can underpin a movement for or against a technical feasibility. This book is for anyone interested in the social shaping of the history and future of information and communication technologies and their societal implications."-Professor William H. Dutton, Director Oxford Internet Institute "Sturken, Thomas, and Ball-Rokeach collect a variety of studies on cultural narratives of technological change that investigate ways of understanding the nature and effects of new technology. All of the articles are excellent-interesting, original, and well-written and researched."-Douglas Kellner, George F. Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education, University of California, Los Angeles "[A] collection of...thoughtful papers."-Communications Booknotes Quarterly "The book as a whole should provoke lively discussions in courses that address the relationship of technology, society, and culture."-Technology and Culture