This book focuses on what it feels like and what it means to spend substantial portions of one's everyday life in the chat rooms, support groups, and virtual communities of cyberspace. Interviewing heavy users online, and becoming one herself, the author creates and ethnographic site for inquiring into the meanings of life online, a place where…

Eight studies by experts in the field of information retrieval examine aspects of public use of such automated systems as online catalogs in libraries. Ward Shaw discusses "Design Principles for Public Access," outlining desirable characteristics of an information retrieval system. Allen Avner and H. George Friedman, Jr. treat problems…

Relatively few individuals have attempted to view the future of computers in education, and those who have done so often tend to focus too much upon present capabilities rather than thinking about the changes that new technology will introduce in the future. George Leonard's book "Education and Ecstasy" provides an interesting picture of…

Intended as an overview of the nature and use of computers in schools, this document describes the history and development of computers generally and of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) specifically. Included is information on several CAI systems currently in operation including (1) Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations (PLATO),…