manifest novels and lamentations, academic and writer chooses the best reading on the network that shapes our world

Professor John Naughton is an Irish scholar and journalist who lives in Cambridge, which is also known as a historian of the Internet. His new book, From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: what you really need to know about the Internet, is published this month Quercus Books Buy From Gutenberg to Mark Zuckerberg at the Guardian bookshop

"I was an academic and a journalist all my working life, so you could say I have a foot in the grave, as my fellow famous, Conor Cruise O'Brien, said. Unusual for someone who works in the British newspapers, however, I am also an engineer - a profession in general, sponsored by the British media elite in the 1990s used to make fun of the Internet as a gang "of us day radio citizen "(as a leading newspaper publisher once told me.) Irritated by ignorance implied in this field, I wrote a brief history of the future which tells the story of how Internet has arrived. And this in turn has given rise to many discussions in recent years with politicians., politicians and business leaders, what struck me in these conversations, that the Internet has gone from status as something exotic (as in space) to mundane (like electricity) was as it was misunderstood - even by people otherwise competent and knowledgeable, so that at the end, I 'I asked the question. what would you really need to know to understand the importance of the Internet The answer is that you need to understand a rather small number of? Big Ideas. But how? Then I remembered a famous article published by the psychologist George Miller, who argued that, on average people can get ideas seven discrete (plus or minus two) in the short-term memory. This led to the idea of a book with nine chapters -.. nine things you really need to know on the network If you are interested, it's a good idea to read the following books and 10 "

Internet the galaxy, Manuel Castells

sociologist Manuel Castells is cyberspace, and many of his academic writing is hard going for the fans. But this volume, distilled from a series of lectures at Oxford, offers the best view we have of the Internet phenomenon.

The Wealth of Networks Yochai Benkler

a conscious homage to Adam Smith, whose book The Wealth of Nations has become the bible of capitalism, with its argument that free market economies are more productive and more beneficial than any of alternatives. Benkler voluminous work is the most comprehensive analysis we have of the importance of "peer production" - the creative activity enabled by the Internet that takes place outside the market system, and many attractions the book is that without you wish. normally buy at the Yale University Press is free to download the benkler.org.

The Future of the Internet, and how to stop it by Jonathan Zittrain

A good analysis of a Harvard professor legal (and former geek) of how the Internet has become a facilitator of breakthrough innovations - and a cautionary tale about how they treated their success in disrupting the seeds may contain the destruction of the network - or at least its "capture" by the established order and trade policies available from all good bookshops -. or as a free download of futureoftheinternet.org /

Transmission by Hari Kunzru

The second novel by Hari Kunzru is more or less one has created a new kind of -. What we might call a Geek from its most striking features is the casual way the Internet is seen as commonplace, taken for granted the foundation for the adventures of his hero Geek, Medha Arjun are established.