Cultures of the Internet: Virtual Spaces, Real Histories, Living Bodies. Este artículo no está disponible.Cultures of the Internet: Virtual Spaces, Real Histories, Living Bodies

The Internet is here but have we caught up with all the implications for culture and everyday life? This collection of original articles on the development of computer-mediated communications brings together many of the most accomplished writers on the Net and cyberspace.

Cultures of Internet examines the arrival of e-mail and online discussion groups, and considers the prospect of an `online world′ - a playground for virtual bodies in which identities are flexible, swappable and disconnected from real-world bodies. The book traces the rise of virtual conviviality and how it supplements the physical encounters between actors in public spaces that are abandoned to the homeless.

The book is distinguished by a critical and social tone. It presents systematic descriptions of the development of the Internet, its history in the military-industrial complex, the role of state policies leading, for example, to the creation of Minitel, and the building of information `superhighways′. It also explores the development of this technology as a commercialized leisure form and a forum for underground political organization and critique.

Rob Shields lectures in Culture and Communication at Lancaster University and maintains links with Carleton University, where he is Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology. He is author of Places on the Margin (1990) and Lifestyle Shopping (1993), and co-editor of Social Engineering: The Technics of Change (1995).

CONTRIBUTORS OUTSIDE WESTERN HEMISPHERE

David Chaney Durham University

Sadie Plant University of Birmingham

Mike Featherstone Goldsmiths, UK

Andre Lemos Universite Paris V