Sunday, October 12, 2014

Book Project - Pirate Politics The New Information Policy Contests

To start out my search for the right book for me, I went as generic as possible and searched “information society” in Amazon.  From that, I found an abundance of prospects to choose from.  However, nearly all of the books were published from more than two years ago, with some of them even dating back to the ‘80s.  I decided to narrow my search after the lack of acceptable publication dates to “information society technology”.  The urge to write about any type of technology must have sprouted in the late 2000s as there was an abundance of books published then along with a sufficient amount published in the time frame we are narrowed down to.
             The first book I came across that I might have an interest in reading was To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World.  It is a 284 page book published in May of 2014 and depicts the different areas the cloud has grounded itself in in the information society.  The book looks at the possible benefits as well as the negatives the cloud has to offer, including the scandal of the NSA.  The second book I found is called Raw Data is an Oxymoron.  In its 192 pages, the book, published in January 2013, talks about how information is not a raw resource people find but instead depicts it as a cultural resource generated by and for the people.  It highlights the time of prehistory data all the way up to the modern data age and the different challenges we face with data.  Both of these texts seemed promising, but they did not quite have the appeal I was looking for.  Luckily for me though, the third time is the charm. 
            The third book I found is called Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Contests.  In 2006, a Swedish file sharing engine called the Pirate Bay, was taken down, resulting in the formation of the Swedish Pirate Party after a group of computer programmers and the like started to complain about recent government enforcements.  The novel follows a political movement that feels the internet should be used as a place for file sharing in the form of free expression.  The 240 page book, published in January 2014, follows the new idea of “cultural environmentalism”.  Even though the book is relatively recent, it still has a strong following, being the most frequently read/purchased book of the three I had chosen.  It also had the most positive reviews out of all of the books I had selected to look at with Library Thing giving it three stars.  Goodread’s Miguel Caetano reviewed the book, being extremely critical of what the author left out while also giving it three stars.  If something can receive a high level of criticism yet still receive three stars, there must be something noteworthy about the book that is worth diving in to find out and is one of the big reasons I chose this as my book.  I am looking forward to seeing how the information society has had its different effects on different political systems throughout the world.  


                                                 


"A Review of Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Contests."Goodreads. Goodreads, 204. Web. 13  Oct. 2014.   

"Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Contests (The Information Society Series) Hardcover –    January 24, 2014." Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Contests (The Information Society Series): Patrick Burkart: 9780262026949: Amazon.com: Books. N.p., 2014. Web. 13 Oct. 2014. 

1 comment:

Tina I. said...

This sounds like a really interesting topic. The Internet is computer programming has become a major player in political contests and it should be interesting to see how that plays out. The fact that an article is so critical of the book also will help you a lot when it comes to writing your paper. Sounds like a good choice.