Author: Robert Hunter File Type: pdf Originally published in 1916, this volume discusses the history of the labour movement during the latter part of the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries, in so far as it relates to the advocacy and use of violence. A contentious issue which divided the labour movement during the 129th century, the author presents arguments made by both sides of this controversy. Nonetheless, the book remains a Marxist critique of violence as practised by direct action anarchists.

Author: Douglas Rushkoff File Type: pdf ReviewAs we shuffle in this morning, were all gathering on a plane of electrons, held together by... well, for most of us it might as well be library paste and fairy dust. But hey, who needs to understand how all this technical stuff works? After all, you dont need to know how a television works to catch Law & Order Yet Another. You dont need to know how a combustion engine works to drive your car to work. Why should you need to know anything about the programming behind the pixels just to get around the web? Because, as Douglas Rushkoff reminds us in this slim volume, the web is different. Its both medium and content. It delivers us to work, delivers our entertainment, hosts our conversation, and more often than not, shapes our opinions. Its medium and message, highway, vehicle, post office, confidant, and huckster. We dont just put our ideas into the web, we also draw ideas out. And the difference in being able to place messages in the medium, and realizing how the medium shapes the message, is the difference between tossing a pebble into water and digging a canal. This is not a coffee maker youre using, and the web is not the Sunday paper. What you do in here can be dangerous if you dont know what youre doing. We like to think that were old hands at the information age, but what Douglas Rushkoff shows is that those who march into the web thinking that knowledge of the outside world will be enough to use this new conduit, have been sadly mistaken over and over. Retail powerhouses in the brick & mortar world find that not only are they unable to easily leverage the web to their advantage, simply putting their prices online makes it easier for companies that only exist in this new universe to quick trump their prices and take their customers. Newspapers find that their ability to aggregate information cant keep up with tools available to their (former) readers. Politicians find that rather than giving them a simple super-phone-bank-money-extractor, operating in the web can also mean being mired in a bog of electronic overload and inaction. Whats the difference between being able to operate in the web, and being able to thrive there? The difference is in being able to understand the how and why of this new world. In ten chapters or commands, Douglas Rushkoff lays out how to live in this new world. Some of this advice will seem straightforward, some of it will need explanation, and some of it will seem more than a little counterintuitive. But all of it is delivered with verve and insight that makes you rethink your interactions on the web. Are you driving your life here, or only a passenger? If you want to get your hands on the wheel, this book is a good place to start. --Daily Kos Douglas Rushkoff is an oracle of the digital age, an author addressing issues few have yet identified. Rushkoff s latest work, Program or be Programmed Ten Commands for a Digital Age, sets aside tired debates about the societal value of the Internet and instead posits that the crucial question at hand is whether we direct technology, or let ourselves be directed by it and those who have mastered it. Choose the former, writes Rushkoff, and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make. Rushkoff presents ten succinct commands for choosing our own destiny in the online era, ranging from Do Not Be Always On to Do Not Sell Your Friends . In the process, he presents a way we can actively leverage these technologies to build a more shareable world similar to the one we envision in our report The New Sharing Economy, as opposed to allowing our tools and those who create them to define the social constructs of the current era. --Shareable.net Todays leading media theorist offers everyone a practical yet mind-blowing guide to our digital world. The debate over whether the Net is good or bad for us fills the airwaves and the blogosphere. But for all the heat of claim and counter-claim, the argument is essentially beside the point its here its everywhere. The real question is, do we direct technology, or do we let ourselves be directed by it and those who have mastered it? Choose the former writes Rushkoff, and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make. In ten chapters, composed of ten commands, accompanied by original illustrations from comic artist Leland Purvis, Rushkoff provides cyberenthusiasts and technophobes alike with the guidelines to navigate this new universe. In this spirited, accessible poetics of new media, Rushkoff picks up where Marshall McLuhan left off, helping readers come to recognize programming as the new literacy of the digital age--and as a template through which to see beyond social conventions and power structures that have vexed us for centuries. This is a friendly little book with a big and actionable message. World-renowned media theorist and counterculture figure Douglas Rushkoff is the originator of ideas such as viral media, social currency and screenagers. He has been at the forefront of digital society from its beginning, predicting the rise of the net, the dotcom boom and bust, as well as todays financial crisis. He is a familiar voice on NPR, and correspondent for Frontline Digital Nation. Heres the first field manual on how to remain human on the internet.-- Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants Rushkoff is damn smart. As someone who understood the digital revolution faster and better than almost anyone, he shows how the internet is a social transformer that should change the way your business culture operates. -Walter Isaacson