True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Since its first publication in 1981, the short novel True Names by Vernor Vinge has been considered one of the most seminal science fiction works to present a fully fleshed-out concept of cyberspace. A finalist for the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novella and winner of the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, True Names was an inspiration to many innovators who have helped shape the world wide web as we know it today.
The paperback edition of True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier, published in 2001, also contained a feast of articles by computer scientists on the cutting edge of digital science, including Danny Hillis, the founder of Thinking Machines and the first Disney Fellow; Timothy C. May, former chief scientist at Intel; Marvin Minsky, co-founder of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, considered by many to be the "father" of AI; Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer, co-developers of habitat, the first real computer interactive environment; Mark Pesce, co-creator of VRML and the author of the Playful World: How Technology Transforms Our Imagination; and others.
This first e-book edition includes all this, plus:
a preface written especially for this edition by editor James Frenkel.
an article on the difficulty of keeping information secure by Internet security expert Bruce Schneier.
a passionate plea regarding the right to privacy by Richard Stallman, founder of the project to develop the free/libre GNU operating system and one of the most important advocates of free/libre software.
True Names itself is the heart of this important book: an exciting, suspenseful science fiction tale still as fresh and intriguing as when it was first published nearly thirty-five years ago.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This remarkable anthology reprints Hugo winner Vinge's (The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge) "True Names" (1981), the story that began SF's cyberpunk revolution, with 11 essays showing its effect on science as well as fiction. The best are the testimonials by pioneers in virtual reality, cryptography and artificial intelligence. The most famous contributors, Marvin Minsky and Danny Hillis, also show the deepest understanding of Vinge's vision. The weakest pieces are science-fictional, appearing pale in the shadow of Vinge's story. Fellow SF author John M. Ford's essay is lightweight, while a stunted attempt at storytelling by Richard Stallman quickly reverts to polemic. The overall problem with the collection is its wildly unbalanced political stance. A quarter of the essayists are "crypto-anarchists," who see the ability of individuals to act secretly as the only defense against a totalitarian surveillance state. Their claim that the response to public tragedy is always a call to restrict civil rights seems sadly prescient, but their antisocial antidote sits poorly after September 11; the crypto-anarchists' beloved secrecy lets both terrorists and tyrants flourish. More socially responsible uses of cryptography exist that could, like the camcorder, give the power of surveillance to the people. It's a shame that editor Frenkel didn't seek out alternate voices such as Bruce Sterling or David Gelernter, but the book is still a testament to SF's power to shape the future and give us advance warning of the rocky issues ahead.
