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NetWorld! What People Are Really Doing on the Internet and What It Means to You

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About This Book

The author surveys how the Internet reshapes everyday life, using reporting, interviews, and case studies to examine commercial ventures, online entertainment, the impact on publishing and libraries, legal and ethical questions about information access and censorship, and social uses of networks including matchmaking and community-building. Chapters progress from a broad overview of the network’s terrain to business practices, cultural experiments, the print-versus-digital debate, controversies over sensitive material, government policy and regulation, and the practical ways people connect online, balancing descriptive anecdotes with discussion of implications for individuals and institutions.

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Title: NetWorld! What People Are Really Doing on the Internet and What It Means to You

Author: David H. Rothman

Release date: June 28, 2017 [eBook #55002]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by KD Weeks, Juliet Sutherland, COVER DESIGN; LINDY DUNLAVEY and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NETWORLD! WHAT PEOPLE ARE REALLY DOING ON THE INTERNET AND WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU ***

Transcriber’s Note:

Each chapter heading featured graphical components that are not readily rendered here. See the note for an example.

Footnotes appeared in a separate section at the end of the text, with the note number restarting for each chapter. In this version, those numbers are retained, but are prefixed with the chapter number, e.g., 1.1, 2.5, 6.7, etc.

There are blocks of text with dotted boundaries, sometime spanning pages, which are inserted into the main text. These have been moved to avoid falling on paragraph breaks, and sometimes joined where page breaks occur. They are given here within a dashed border, in order to call out their separate nature.

Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.

There are many URLs in the text, given the topic, but it is unlikely that any are still extant, given the publication date in 1995.

Any corrections are indicated using an underline highlight. Placing the cursor over the correction will produce the original text in a small popup.

Any corrections are indicated as hyperlinks, which will navigate the reader to the corresponding entry in the corrections tale in the note at the end of the text.


NetWorld!
what people are
really
doing
on the
INTERNET,
and what
it means
to you

DAVID H. ROTHMAN

“A considerable achievement.”—William F. Buckley, Jr.

Current Events/Internet

“A considerable achievement. You find yourself wanting to read NetWorld! even if you have no thought of baptism into the great new scene.” —William F. Buckley, Jr.

“David H. Rothman has done the best job yet of illustrating exactly how and why the Internet will change the texture of daily life. Most discussion of the information age is full of airy generalizations. NetWorld! is full of specific, amusing, often racy illustrations of how people around the world have already put the Net’s possibilities to work. This is a very useful and entertaining book.” —James Fallows Washington editor of the Atlantic Monthly

Exploring Life on the Net

Praised by the New York Times For his entertaining style, David H. Rothman has written a lively, revealing, and sharp-eyed account of life on the Net. Read how a handsome young librarian in Adelaide, Australia, got engaged to a Kansas City woman he’d never met——except online. Discover why net.censors and other interlopers could eventually cost America billions of dollars. Learn how an Anglican priest uses the Internet to “hear” confessions and help keep in touch with his flock. From electronic libraries to the digitized cadaver of an executed killer, NetWorld! covers everything that’s happening on the Net.

Whether you surf nightly or know the Net only secondhand, NetWorld! will shed new light on the cultural phenomenon that is engrossing millions around the world.

Prima Publishing


NetWorld!

What People
Are Really
Doing on the Internet,
and What It Means to
You

David H. Rothman

PRIMA PUBLISHING


With 88s to Carly,
my dearest company
in life and on the ’Bahn.

© 1996 by David H. Rothman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from Prima Publishing, except for the inclusion of quotations in a review.

PRIMA PUBLISHING and colophon are trademarks of Prima Communications, Inc.

Cover design by the Dunlavey Studio

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rothman, David H.
Networld!: what people are really doing on the Internet, and what it
means to you/David H. Rothman.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN O-7615-0013-8
1. Internet (Computer network) I. Title.
TK5105.875.I57R69 1995
004.6’7—dc20
95-5287
CIP
95 96 97 98 99 AA 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America

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