books
Critical Art+Design (Culture + Technology)
Note: A starting point rather than an exhaustive assay, this list also does not include such key thinkers as Michel Foucault, Noam Chomsky, Luce Irigaray, Nicolas Bourriaud, etc., etc., whose work informs many of these writings but is primarily focused on other topics.
Bolter, J.D. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing
Cassell, Justine, and Henry Jenkins, eds., From Barbie to Mortal Kombat
Cherny, Lynn, and Elizabeth Reba Weise (eds.). Wired_Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace
DeLanda, Manuel. War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (excellent analysis of parallel development of technology and military might in Europe and America since the 18th century; later chapters on cryptography and computerized war gaming are especially valuable)
Dibbell, Julian. My Tiny Life (insightful insider’s view of MOO life; first chapter, “A Rape in Cyberspace” is a landmark article on MOOs originally published in the Village Voice)
—Play Money (account of a year spent as a gold farmer in the MMPORG Lineage)
Druckrey, Timothy. Electronic Culture (one of the standard critical anthologies on this subject—includes everyone from Husserl and Flusser to Manovich and Turkle)
Eco, Umberto. Travels in Hyperreality
Giedion, Siegfried. Mechanization Takes Command (older book that focuses on pre-20th-century invention; often out of print).
Gleick, James. Chaos: Making of a New Science (excellent overview of the subject for nonspecialists)
Gray, Chris Hables (ed.). The Cyborg Handbook (excellent anthology including everything from early NASA documents to cyborg fiction)
Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto” in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (a cornerstone text of the digital age)
—Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse
Heim, Michael, The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality
Kelly, Kevin. Out of Control (excellent early book by Wired magazine’s founding editor, formerly an editor of Whole Earth Review, covering many key network-era subjects from alife to e-money)
Kolko, Beth E., Lisa Nakamura, and Gilbert B. Rodman. Race in Cyberspace
Landow, George. Hypertext 2.0
—Hyper/Text/Theory
Levy, Steven. Artificial Life
—”Crypto Rebels” in Wired (May-June 1993) (good general text on cryptography issues)
Malloy, Judy. Women, Art and Technology (landmark study)
Moser, Mary Ann, ed., Immersed in Technology
Plant, Sadie. Zeroes + Ones (rich feminist re-reading of digital culture and history)
Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community
Stafford, Barbara. Artful Science (exellent analysis of Enlightment art-science)
Stafford, B., and Frances Terpak (eds.). Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen (the catalogue of an important Getty Museum exhibition spanning four centuries of European-American “media machines”; well illustrated, with images of rarely seen devices and works by artists as well as inventors)
Stone, Allucquère Rosanne. The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age (excellent essay collection, several of which are about role-play and online community)
Tenner, Edward. Why Things Bite Back (excellent debunking of progressivist myths about technology, focusing on such areas as medicine and sports)
Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen (landmark study of avatarism)
Wiener, Norbert Cybernetics