John Markoff Bücher

Told by one of our greatest chroniclers of technology and society, the definitive biography of iconic serial visionary Stewart Brand, from the Merry Pranksters and the generation-defining Whole Earth Catalog to the marriage of environmental consciousness and hacker capitalism and the rise of a new planetary culture--the story behind so many other stories Stewart Brand has long been famous if you know who he is, but for many people outside the counterculture, early computing, or the environmental movement, he is perhaps best known for his famous mantra Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Steve Jobs's endorsement of these words as his code to live by is fitting; Brand has played many roles, but one of the most important is as a model for how to live. The contradictions are striking: A blond-haired WASP with a modest family inheritance, Brand went to Exeter and Stanford and was an army veteran, but in California in the 1960s he became an artist and a photographer in the thick of the LSD revolution. While tripping on acid on the roof of his building, he envisioned how valuable it would be for humans to see a photograph of the planet they shared from space, an image that in the end landed on the cover of his Whole Earth Catalog, the defining publication of the counterculture. He married a Native American woman and was committed to protecting indigenous culture, which connected to a broader environmentalist mission that has been a through line of his life. At the same time, he has outraged purists because of his pragmatic embrace of useful technologies, including nuclear power, in the fight against climate change. The famous tagline promise of his catalog was Access to Tools; with rare exceptions he rejected politics for a focus on direct power. It was no wonder, then, that he was early to the promise of the computer revolution and helped define it for the wider world. Brand's life can be hard to fit onto one screen. John Markoff, also a great chronicler of tech culture, has done something extraordinary in unfolding the rich, twisting story of Brand's life against its proper landscape. As Markoff makes marvelously clear, the streams of individualism, respect for science, environmentalism, and Eastern and indigenous thought that flow through Brand's entire life form a powerful gestalt, a California state of mind that has a hegemonic power to this day. His way of thinking embraces a true planetary consciousness that may be the best hope we humans collectively have.

An analysis of the political and cultural forces that gave rise to the personal computer chronicles its development through the people, politics, and social upheavals that defined its time, from a teenage anti-war protester who laid the groundwork for the PC revolution to the imprisoned creator of the first word processing software for the IBM PC. Reprint.

A world-renowned computer security expert gives his personal account of the thrilling and ingenius capture of the Internet's most notorious cyberthief--Kevin Mitnick--in a gripping drama which illuminates the good, the bad, and the ugly of the computer world. Photos.

This Element suggests that the very crises that generated radical mobilizations since the turn of the millennium have both led activists to reject other strategies for social transformation and to see anarchist practices as appropriate to our time. It suggests the need for research on social movements as important sources of theory.

Vo februári 1995 zatkla FBI najhľadanejšieho počítačového zločinca na svete Kevina Mitnicka, po ktorom pátrala už niekoľko rokov. Mitnick by bol možno dodnes na slobode, keby neurobil osudnú chybu. Na Vianoce 1994 prenikol sieťou Internetu do osobného počítača jedného z najlepších odborníkov na bezpečnostné systémy v Amerike - Tsumomu Shimomuru. Od toho okamihu sa začal odohrávať strhujúci zápas dvoch geniálnych mozgov, v ktorom zvíťazil ten lepší. Nešlo však len o osobný súboj, išlo najma o záchranu obrovského množstva dát, ktorých majiteľmi boli veľké počítačové spoločnosti a vládne úrady. Kevin Mitnick mohol v každom okamihu ukradnúť a zničiť informácie v hodnote stoviek miliónov dolárov. Zatknutie Mitnicka bolo udalosťou, ktorá sa objavila na prvých stránkach svetovej tlače a ktorá podnietila mohutnú diskusiu o fenoméne Internet a o práve na súkromie. Táto kniha je predovšetkým napínavým detektívnym príbehom. Je však súčastne príbehom z virtuálneho sveta Internetu, v ktorom už dnes žijú milióny ľudí a v ktorom prebieha zápas dobra proti zlu presne tak, ako v každom inom ľudskom svete.