Boyer, Christine. Cybercities: Visual Perception in the Age of Electronic Communication. Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. Boyer concludes that, frozen to one side of our terminal's screen, we risk becoming incapable of action in a real city plagued by crime, hatred, disease, unemployment, and under-education.

Brook, James and Iain Boal. Resisting the Virtual Life: The Culture and Politics of Information. City Lights, 1995. A sobbering anthology of semi-scholarly essays on technological strategies and advancements and their effects on the human psyche.

Cherny, Lynn, and Elizabeth Reba, eds. Wired-Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace. Seal, 1996. Women speak their minds on their "place" in the Net culture, from a direct account of gender attitudes at Wired magazine to the thorny tension between free speech and sexual harassment online. Don't miss the essay on hackers' attitudes toward women.

Dery, Mark, ed. Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture. Duke University Press, 1994. Essays on electronic communication, cyberpunk culture, and rants and flames in cyberspace on subjects such as the typewriter, virtual reality, feminism, comics, and erotica for cybernauts.

Featherstone, Mike, and Roger Burrows. Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment. Sage, 1996. All about technological body modifications, replacements and prosthetics; bodies in cyberspace, virtual environments and cyborg culture; cultural representations of technological embodiment in visual and literary productions; and cyberpunk science fiction as a pre-figurative social and cultural theory. A place to start in coming to terms with the potentials and realities of cyberculture.

Gibson, William. Neuromancer . Ace Books, 1984. The classic science fiction novel where the word "cyberspace" was coined. Worth a read for its historical context.

Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature.  Routledge, 1991. Ten essays, written mostly during the 1980s, with a feminist perspective and the premise that nature is constructed, rather than discovered--and that truth is made, not found.

Haraway, Donna. Modest-Witness: Second-Millenium.Femaleman-Meets-OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience. Routledge, 1997.  Probes the connections between feminism and science, examining reproductive freedom, biological approaches to race, and other issues that may contribute to a feminist, multicultural study of technoscience. Unique, from the title onward.

Heim, Michael. The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality. Oxford University Press, 1993.  The "philosopher of cyberspace" discusses the effect of word-processing on the English language, the new kind of literacy promised by Hypertext, how computers have altered people's thought habits, how people will distinguish between virtual and real reality, and the appearance of virtual reality in popular culture.

Hiltz, Starr Roxanne and Murray Turoff. Network Nation: Human Communication via Computer . (revised edition) MIT Press, 1993. A visionary book when it was first published in the late 1970s, The Network Nation has become the defining document and standard reference for the field of computer mediated communication (CMC). This revised edition adds a substantial new chapter on "superconnectivity" (invented and defined in the unabridged edition of the Online Dictionary of the English Language, (c) 2067) that reviews the developments of the last fifteen years and updates the authors' speculations about the future.

Hiltz and Turoff highlight major current organizational, educational, and public applications of CMC, integrate their theoretical understanding of the impact of CMC technology, address ethical and legal issues, and describe a scenario in 2084. They have also added a selected bibliography on the key literature.

Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff each hold the position of Professor of Computer and Information Sciences at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. They are also members of the faculty of the Graduate School of Business at Rutgers University, Newark. They created the mother of all interactive collaborative platforms, The Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES), in the early 80s as a part of a National Science Foundation research grant.

Jones, Steven, ed. CyberSociety 2.0: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Sage, 1995. Highlights specific cyber societies and how computer-mediated communication affects the notion of self and its relation to community, and examines issues of community, conduct, fixing identity, and the exercise of power in social relations.

Jones, Steven, ed. Virtual Culture. Sage, 1995. Not long after William Gibson hit the charts with his cyberpunk fiction, especially the groundbreaking (or Web-busting) Neuromancer, discussions were buzzing with ideas about how technology affects our culture and our beliefs. The essays that Steven Jones has collected explore cybersociety, online cultures, and their relationship not only to one another but also to traditional societies. The experiences of typically marginalized cultures--"cyberhate," Third World representation, gay identity in cyberspace, and punishment of "virtual offenders"--are also explored, as in Ananda Mitra's essay, "Virtual Commonality: Looking for India on the Internet." Virtual Culture is a cutting-edge book that addresses the effects and defects of discourse and community on the Web.

Kolko, Beth, Lisa Nakamura, and Gilbert B. Rodman (Editors) Race in Cyberspace. Routledge, 2000. Although much has been written about the impact of technology on our daily lives, little attention has been paid to the effects of cyberspace on racial politics and identity. This collection of twelve essays explores this surprisingly underexamined aspect of cyberculture studies as it tackles a broad range of questions: the role played by language in the construction of racialized identities online; offline representations of cyberspace as a racially coded environment; and the impact technology and education has on racial inequities-in terms of access and representation on the web. Groundbreaking and timely, Race in Cyberspace brings to light the important yet vastly overlooked intersection of race and cyberspace.

Kroker, Arthur and Michael Weinstein. Data Trash: The Theory of Virtual Class. St. Martin's, 1994. This book is a primer on the state of things to come when we become the Internet. The authors anticipate the debris that will be left by the traffic on the information highway-and they can't ignore the roadkill. What follows is a survey exploring the consequences of technology on culture, economy, class and individuality. They hold that virtual reality will supplant reality itself, that use of information will reinforce extant caste systems, and that ultimately the information highway will not be so much a tool providing us with usable data but rather it will provide those who control it with data to use us. Their findings, while alternately compelling and repellent, are undermined as they single-handedly double the lexicon of technobabble. While the suppositions of the authors should not be dismissed, one must note that they prescribe no action. A cautionary note is a useful check against technological autocracy, but in this format the hypotheses take on a cast of conspiracy theory, since supporting evidence is often neglected at the expense of covering a multitude of topics. Still, this volume is important for the questions it makes us ask about our intentions for and the ultimate use of information technology.

Landow, George. Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. John Hopkins University Press, 1992. The first book to bring together the worlds of literary theory and computer technology. In the second edition, Landow shifts focus from Intermedia to Microcosm, Storyspace, and the World Wide Web. For critics, students, artists, and writers, this new edition will remain an invaluable resource.

Lanham, Richard. The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts. University of Chicago Press, 1993. Lanham's essays explore how electronic text fulfills the expressive agenda of twentieth-century visual art and music, revolutionizes the curriculum, democratizes the instruments of art, and poses anew the cultural accountability of humanism.

Porter, James. Rhetorical Ethics and Internetworked Writing. Ablex, in press. All about ethics in the internetworked writing classroom and Community; classical, modern, and post-modern views of ethics for rhetoric and writing, complicating rhetorical-ethical stances, legal and ethical issues in cyberspace. All this plus an appendix of electronic resources for ethical inquiry.

Poster, Mark. The Second Media Age. Polity-Blackwell, 1995. This book examines the implications of new communication technologies in the light of the most recen work in social and cultural theory. It critically evaluates the concepts of media and technology in various traditions of cultureal theory, with the aim of rethinking the relations of humans to machines. The author also examines theories of post-modernity in relation to the new media and the debate over multiculturalism. He argues that new developments in electronic media, such as the Internet and Virtual Reality, may so alter our habits of communication and so deeply reposition our identities that the designation "a second media age" is justified.

Poster assesses the contributions of theorists such as Baudrillard, Lyotard, Habermas, Haraway, and Guattari. he also develops further his own distinctive and original approach, building on his previous book The Mode of Information. Finally, Poster analyzies various cultural materials in the light of his approach: Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, Richard Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung, and the televised reporting of the first Gulf War.

Salus, Peter. Casting the Net: From ARPANET to Internet and Beyond. Addison-Wesley, 1995. The entire history of the Net and the people who birthed and raised it.

Schor, Julie. The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure. Basic Books, 1992. The subject of enormous media attention and lavish acclaim from reviewers, this national bestseller explains why, contrary to all expectations, Americans are working harder than ever. Could computers be playing a role?

Shields, Rob, ed. Cultures of Internet: Virtual Spaces, Real Histories, Living Bodies. Sage, 1996. A sociologist's perspective.

Slouka, Mark. War of the Worlds: Cyberspace and the High-Tech Assault on Reality. Basic Books, 1995. The dark side of the Net. Among those who reject the principle of technology uber alles, Mark Slouka is now a clear leader. His War of the Worlds is among the most well-informed, well-written critiques of a culture hell-bent on locating its humanity in machines. These essays offer a critique of how cyberspace effects and changes the rest of reality. With an acerbic tongue, Slouka examines what he considers to be the dark side of the net. Slouka can get quite melodramatic, as when he compares Wired editor Kevin Kelly to Nazi propaganda filmmaker Leni Rienfenstahl. War of the Worlds is well worth reading, though, because it's important to critically review the critics, especially those who argue their point this well.

Stone, Alucquère Rosanne. The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age. MIT Press, 1995. An in-depth look at the effects of telecommunications technologies on gender relations and identity.

Taylor, Todd, and Irene Ward, eds. Literacy Theory in the Age of the Internet. Columbia University Press, 1998. Will the rush to get "wired" mean little more than enhanced visuals or automated lecture delivery--or can it result in innovative pedagogies for improving literacy into the twenty-first century? In this collection, some of the most progressive voices in literacy studies reconsider what it means to be literate in the information age, and offer practical advice not only for getting networked computers into the classroom but also for instructing students and other teachers how to tap into their boundless potential.

Tumon, Myron, ed. Literacy Online: The Promise (and Peril) of Reading and Writing with Computers.  University of Pittsuburgh Press, 1992.

Tumon, Myron. Teletheory: Grammatology in the Age of Video. Routledge, 1989. Out of print but worth a spot on this list.

Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. Simon and Schuster, 1995. Sometimes called "the first ethnographic study of the computer world." All about cyberculture and how it helps us comment on real life.

Sherry Turkle is rapidly becoming the sociologist of the Internet, and that's beginning to seem like a good thing. While her first outing, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, made groundless assertions and seemed to be carried along more by her affection for certain theories than by a careful look at our current situation, Life on the Screen is a balanced and nuanced look at some of the ways that cyberculture helps us comment upon real life (what the cybercrowd sometimes calls RL). Instead of giving in to any one theory on construction of identity, Turkle looks at the way various netizens have used the Internet, and especially MUDs (Multi-User Dimensions), to learn more about the possibilities available in apprehending the world. One of the most interesting sections deals with gender, a topic prone to rash and partisan pronouncements. Taking as her motto William James's maxim "Philosophy is the art of imagining alternatives," Turkle shows how playing with gender in cyberspace can shape a person's real-life understanding of gender. Especially telling are the examples of the man who finds it easier to be assertive when playing a woman, because he believes male assertiveness is now frowned upon while female assertiveness is considered hip, and the woman who has the opposite response, believing that it is easier to be aggressive when she plays a male, because as a woman she would be considered "bitchy." Without taking sides, Turkle points out how both have expanded their emotional range. Other topics, such as artificial life, receive an equally calm and sage response, and the first-person accounts from many Internet users provide compelling reading and good source material for readers to draw their own conclusions.

Zakon, Robert. "Hobbes' Internet Timeline". (November 24, 1997). The "genealogy" of the Net. You gotta see what Zakon has put together here—and it's free!

Zuboff, Shoshana.  In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power.  Basic Books, 1988. A Harvard social scientist argues that today's computer revolution in the workplace confronts us with the momentous choice of whether to "automate" and thus dehumanize workers or whether to "informate" and thus give workers the knowledge to make critical, collaborative judgments.