Grex Cyberpunk Conference

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Grex Cyberpunk Item 18: What are you reading?
Entered by raven on Thu Jan 26 21:17:49 UTC 1995:

This is the item to discuss cyberpunkish books you are reading.
I'm working on 3 right now...  

Roger Lewin: Complexity I would recommend this book as a good intro to
artificial life/chaos/complexity theory.  It lucidly explains ideas like
the spontaneous evolution of order in initaly random  Boolean networks. 
While not as technical or thorough as Steven Levy's Artificial life it's
still a good read.

Eric Drexler: Engines of Creation: This book shows that nanotech is at
least feasible, though I think he's a tad optomisitic about the
scale it can be applied, and the ethical ramification of nanotech
(I'm only 1/3rd the way through however).

Bruce Sterling: Globalhead I would say that his writing is improving
over time, his character develpoment is less two dimensional, and
there also moments of both humor and horror such is in "Our Neural
Chernobyl."  That story parodies science book reviews while also exploring
what might happen if we dive too deep into messing with our neurons.

9 responses total.

#1 of 9 by jg on Fri Jan 27 06:58:02 1995:

"Global Village" is good theory (Gestalt)... and Howard Rheingold (author 
of the NEWW and Improved WELL(Whole Earth Catalog) has a great book out called
"The Virtual Community".

#2 of 9 by matts on Wed Feb 1 18:49:27 1995:

engines of creation is killer.  Check out "Unbounding the Future", which
is by far the best n-tech, drexler book out there.  If you just 
eat the stuff up, and want to know how to build you r own "nanite"
check out "nanosystems".  ANother great sterling book is the classic
"the hacker crackdown"....amazing stuff...

#3 of 9 by oklum on Sat Feb 11 02:25:51 1995:

And when you've finished "the hacker crackdown" and want more...
try Katie Hafner & John Markoff: Cyberpunk.
This book gives a very good impression of the people behind the hacks

#4 of 9 by raven on Thu Feb 16 00:51:00 1995:

        I'm just finishing "The Virtual Community" which is indeed a thought
provoking book on the formation, maintence, and potential pitfalss of virtual 
communities.  The WELL which is it's main focus is a picospan based BBS
just like Grex, so many of the high points and dilemas will sound quite
familiar to Grexers.

#5 of 9 by jg on Mon Feb 20 05:10:21 1995:

Another book for you that I'm using as a reference... 
"Managing Interactive Video/Multimedia Projects"
It's kind of a project managers's guide to completion of a project.

#6 of 9 by srw on Mon Feb 20 07:14:02 1995:

Has any reader of this conference been following the exploits of
Kevin Mitnick? He broke into the Well and netcom.com recently,
obtained root, read people's mail, stole the credit card numbers of all
the paying accounts, and then used IP spoofing to get past the firewall
protecting Tsumomu Shimomura's computers - stealing security programs.

Shimomura is a noted internet security expert, and worked with the FBI to
track Mitchnik down. Mitchnik was in Raleigh NC, using a cellular phone
system to do all his hacking. The authorities traced the phone usage
to the location and arrested him.

Mitnick had been underground for two years, as he was wanted for other
crimes. A lot of this has been printed in mainstream papers like the
New York Times. See Sunday's "News of the week in review" NYT section
for an interesting perspective by John Markoff.

#7 of 9 by srw on Mon Feb 20 07:15:19 1995:

(oops I meant to put that in a new item)

#8 of 9 by matts on Fri Feb 24 02:39:53 1995:

'


so k

#9 of 9 by freddude on Mon Dec 23 01:29:26 2002:

No one has posted here in about 7 years, why is this still up?

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