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se this page to link to an excerpt from
our book and to download PDFs of some of our most
popular short publications and reports.
Click any of the following to
download a PDF version.
Forward 150 Years (21-page assessment of our
potential future)
Back 150 Years (a 24-page look at
recent communications history)
KidZone Highlights (12 pages of education and
entertainment)
Teachers' Tips (13 pages of tools and ideas for
teaching about the future)
2004 Predictions Survey
(62-page report sharing
prognostications)
2006 Predictions Survey (115-page report)
Click here to see a 60-slide show about the
content on the Imagining the Internet website.
Click here to read excerpts from
each chapter
Selected by the American Library Association as a
"Choice" book for 2006 - named an outstanding
academic title - in the top 10 percent of works
published.
In brief: "Imagining
the Internet: Personalities, Predictions,
Perspectives" (Rowman & Littlefield), is a print
book that serves as a companion to this database. In
addition to offering a large collection of quotable
forecasts from tech luminaries of the 1990s, it
includes a brief history lesson and a deep look at the
future of pervasive networks of all kinds,
incorporating the stories of Six Degrees, the
Romantics, the Utopians, technorealists, gaia, and a
projected battle between Cosmists and Terrans over a
future in which artilects may dominate the galaxy. It
shares concepts of such thinkers as Ithiel de Sola
Pool, Vannevar Bush, Duncan Watts, Albert-Laszlo
Barabasi, and Isaac Asimov while parsing the thoughts
of Bill Gates, Nicholas Negroponte, John Perry Barlow,
Bruce Sterling, Clifford Stoll, Al Gore, and dozens of
other networked communications stakeholders and
skeptics. The book can be ordered (softcover for under
$30; hardcover about $75) from online retailers,
including
Barnes & Noble and
Amazon.com or you can order it directly from
Rowman & Littlefield online.
"Janna Anderson offers a
great perspective on the history and future of the
Internet based on Elon University/Pew Internet &
American Life Project's extensive prediction
collection. Good books come from thorough research.
Starting with the earliest communications systems, such
as the telegraph, is a useful bonus. Being a part of
and having the last word in this fine past-and-future
Internet chronicle is a real honor."-
Gordon Bell, vice
president of research and development, DEC; leader of
the National Science Foundation's Information
Superhighway Initiative; senior researcher,
Microsoft
"There are many books on the
Internet and cyberculture - part hype, part gloss,
sometimes solid technology criticism. Anderson's
book is valuable because it helps sort out differing
viewpoints and puts them in a historical context,
recreating many of the ups and downs of the 1990s,
before things got really crazy. She has an amazing
database of predictions, collected over time, and
selects from it well. This book is never dense reading,
but it is packed with interesting facts and milestones
to jar my memory, to help me recreate what that time
was like, because the subtle changes are what have
worked us over so thoroughly. My favorite part in these
excursions into the words of technology prophets and
critics is picking out the threads that had an
influence - that helped shape the larger visions of
what this massive commons has become." -
Christine Boese,
cyberculture columnist, CNN.com; writer, CNN Headline
News
"Janna Anderson illuminates
with great clarity the history, dreams, and challenges
of the Internet, which allow the reader to see glimpses
of the future. A wonderful and important
contribution."- Tiffany
Shlain, founder and chair, the Webby
Awards
"Anderson examines the
sometimes prescient, sometimes humorously off-base
predictions made about the possible evolution of the
Internet during the early 1990s... Anderson's
knowledge is encyclopedic, and her accessible,
jargon-free style - reminiscent of New York Times
science writer Gina Kolata's - will engage
professors and researchers without alienating
undergraduates. Like the essay anthology
'Web.Studies,' ed. by David Gauntlett and Ross
Horsley, and Katie Hafner's historical text
'Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the
Internet,' this book would make a choice
acquisition for any library's technology section.
Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers." -
M.E. DiPaolo, in a review
for CHOICE, published by the American Library
Association
"[Imagining the Internet]
looks at the future through an analysis of the past. It
is somewhat difficult after becoming immersed in these
insights to remember that Internet communication began
with the utmost diffidence. Indeed the first events
involved a computer crash and unmemorable twaddle. ...
We hope that this material will be useful to scholars
who wish to assess the distance we have come;
journalists who are trying to figure out where we are
now; government, industry, and nonprofit officials who
want to build the Internet of the future; and people of
all walks of life who must learn to recognize the
coming complexities of their networked world."-
Lee Rainie, director, the
Pew Internet & American Life Project, from the
Foreword
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