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Networking--connecting people to people to information by means of telecommunications technology-has changed our methods of working, our definition of collaboration, even our view of
time and space. Our use of computers-based technology is moving toward ubiquity and transparency. Not only is the technology everywhere, its ease of use no longer draws our attention away from the task being performed
or the information being processed. Now, it is as easy to send a message to a colleague down the hall as it is to someone across the continent. Some of us carry on near-real-time "conversations" with
collaborators at vast distances and in different time zones, with neither constraint at all apparent. In fact, who we count as collaborator and how we define community are now wide open if there is network access. The
focus of this book is about the politics, the sociology, and the legal issues that, along with the interfaces, gateways , protocols, and wires, have made networking the change agent it has become.
"Navigating the Networks" was, for the early years of telecommunications phenomenon, primarily a technical challenge-a set of hardware and software problems. Could one get all the parts of the system working
together and all working at the same point in time to enable one to move information from one spot to another? Today, while some of those technical challenges remain, the issues are of a different sort. How does one
find needed information? Who has access to what? What is the etiquette of electronic correspondence? Who is an author? How do we deal with intellectual property rights, copyright, and the like? These are just a few of
the issues addressed in this volume. ©1994
255 pages, Softbound, ISBN:0-938734-85-7 |
