David Thorne has quickly established himself as the world’s leading internet troublemaker. Since his emailed efforts to settle an overdue bill with a drawing of a spider achieved massive worldwide online exposure in 2008, millions of people have followed Thorne’s hilarious exchanges with unwitting victims reported via the mainstream media, online and email inboxes globally. Thorne’s razor-sharp writings, compiled in his first book “The Internet is a Playground” say something about everyday life we can all relate to.

'Digital Labor' asks whether life on the Internet is mostly work, or play. We tweet, we tag photos, we link, we review books, we comment on blogs, we remix media and we upload video to create much of the content that makes up the web.

Based on four years of experience teaching computers to 8-12 year olds, media scholar Ellen Seiter offers parents and educators practical advice on what children need to know about the Internet and when they need to know it. The Internet Playground argues that, contrary to the promises of technology boosters, teaching with computers is very difficult. Seiter points out that the Internet today resembles a mall more than it does a library. While children love to play online games, join fan communities, and use online chat and instant messaging, the Internet is also an appallingly aggressive marketer to children and, as this book passionately argues, an educational boondoggle.

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.

Looks at the growing problem of intentionally misleading and erroneous information on the Web.

More emails, HR run-ins, and other humor from the author of The Internet is a playground.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Internet is a Playground & I'll Go Home Then comes The Collected Works of 27b/6 - Victorian Edition.