Virginia Heffernan gives a highly informative analysis of what the internet is and can be in an examination of its past, present and future.

In an age of ubiquitous digital media and permanent mutual observation scandals are omnipresent. Everybody can release them, everybody can become their victim. Videos on mobile phones terminate careers, Twitter messages generate outrage, and SMS messages turn into evidence. Documents of embarrassment and public disgrace today display a novel kind of lightness and agility. They can be copied in no time, spread very quickly, resist all censorship - and in the extreme case stir up worldwide indignation. The consequence: the reputation of the powerful and the powerless, of enterprises and states, can be destroyed in record time. In order to illustrate these considerations the books describes recent case-(hi)stories, discussing public figures such as Tiger Woods and Anthony Weiner, the powerful and the helpless that suddenly find themselves in a worldwide pillory.

Acts of Media seeks to consolidate a field of multidisciplinary work around media technologies that intersects with legal scholarship. This volume brings together contributions from leading academics, lawyers, researchers and policy experts about contemporary India and Sri Lanka. The approaches to law and media taken in this volume challenge us to think outside of traditional disciplinary descriptions. Rather than approaching the law as being outside of, and constantly catching up with the media, the contributors of this book view law and media as being deeply intertwined. The chapters in this volume address the relationship between law and media through different entry points---disputes over media and information systems shaping law, theories of law that incorporate media forms, and law and media co-producing trials. The multidisciplinary nature of this book has facilitated a rich and productive conversation among legal scholars, researchers and lawyers from disciplines such as constitutional law, law and technology, media and cinema studies, legal anthropology and political science.

There no longer seems any point to criticizing the internet. We indulge in the latest doom-mongering about the evils of social media-on social media. We scroll through routine complaints about the deterioration of our attention spans. We resign ourselves to hating the internet even as we spend much of our waking lives with it. Yet our unthinking surrender to its effects-to the ways it recasts our aims and desires-is itself digital technology's most powerful achievement. A Web of Our Own Making examines how online practices are reshaping our lives outside our notice. Barba-Kay argues that digital technology is a 'natural technology'-a technology so intuitive as to conceal the extent to which it transforms our attention. He shows how and why this technology is reconfiguring knowledge, culture, politics, aesthetics, and theology. The digital revolution is primarily taking place not in Silicon Valley but within each of us.

"What I wanted after college was a job and my own apartment, but what I needed was a good comeuppance, and that’s what I got." When Dave Itzkoff graduated from Princeton in 1998–the first member of his family to earn a college degree–he expected to be rewarded with a career, and a life, that mattered. Instead, he ended up convinced that he was selling the entire institution of manhood down the river. After a series of personal and professional experiences stripped him of any lingering sense of entitlement, Itzkoff found himself working as an editor at Maxim, the pugnacious frontrunner in a new breed of men’s periodicals dubbed "lad magazines." There, he was initiated into a culture of heavily retouched girlie pictorials, dirty jokes, disingenuous sex advice, and shopping guides for expensive electronic gadgetry. And as Maxim continued its inexorable rise to become the most successful men’s magazine in modern publishing history, Itzkoff was left wondering what his work–and his life–really meant. Lads is the hilarious, heartbreaking story of Dave Itzkoff's efforts to define himself as a man while working at a magazine that was purveying a vision of young manhood–a state of perpetual adolescence–that was seductive to all but viable for none. Lads takes us deep inside one young man’s struggle with identity, responsibility, and sexuality, in an unsparingly candid account of how men really relate to one another, as fathers and sons, as employers and employees, as colleagues and friends. Lads is trenchant. Lads is perceptive. Lads is alarmingly funny. This is an unforgettable debut from a young writer of astounding talent.

~ STARLET'S WEB Gold Medal Winner: 2014 Readers' Favorite International Book Award Contest: Christian Romance ~ ~ STARLET'S WEB Gold Medal Winner: 2013 AUTHORdb Book Cover Contest! ~ ~ STARLET'S WEB WINNER: January 21, 2013 IBD AWARD! ~ Love. Lies. Acting. A novel about celebrity influence & teens in Hollywood. What makes a star shine? Humility empowers the spirit. Sometimes. Discover the Starlet Series for new adult & college readers and uncover the life of a talented actress caught in Hollywood's web of lies. I'm actress Liana Marie Michael. I won an Oscar at 17 but whatever. Celebrity is what it is: marketing a product. I'm part of a tight-knit group. I keep to myself and don't complain about my life. I've been happy until lately. Evan dumping me leveled me. Matthew shocked me. I knew he couldn't hurt me with my bodyguard so near, but his eyes...so I have trust issues. Dating super-hot Byron didn't help clear the confusion either. I'm torn between going to church on Sunday and making a living from pop culture. But experience builds perspective. My days of shutting up needed to end. First, I told Manuel. Then I told my mom. It turned out awesome until I learned the truth. Now I'm screwed. Totally. Let's face it: Hollywood's web entangles everyone. "YA fans will absolutely want to check out this series, where they'll find a new heroine to root for in the flawed but sympathetic Liana." - BlueInk Review ---Genres: YA contemporary romance, teen love and romance, young adult, coming of age fiction, new adult Christian romance, cultural fiction. Contains sex and mild swearing.

This history of the punk movement in the United States shows how punk music, fashion, art, and attitude clashed with and ultimately influenced mainstream culture. Unlike other volumes on the punk era that focus on just the music—and primarily on British punk bands—Punks: A Guide to an American Subculture spans the full expanse of punk as it happened in the United States, from the late-1960s blast from Iggy Pop and the Stooges to the full explosion of punk in the mid 1970s to its next-generation resurgences and continuing aftershocks. Punks covers it all—not just music, but the punk influence on film, fashion, media, and language. Readers will see how punk spread virally, through fan-created magazines, record labels, clubs, and radio stations, as well as how mainstream America reacted, then absorbed aspects of punk culture. The book includes interviews with key members of the punk subculture, including new conversations with people who participated in the punk scene in the 1970s and 1980s.