Cyber Reader

Neil Spiller Introduction; Extracts Charles Babbage Of the Analytical Engine; EM Forster The Machine Stops; Vannevar Bush As We May Think; JD Bolter Essays of Operation; Norbert Wiener Organization of the Message; JCR Licklider Man-Computer Symbiosis; Douglas Engelbart Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework; Marshal McLuhan The Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis; Gordon Pask The Architectural Relevance of Cybernetics; Paul Virilio The Aesthetics of Disappearance; Cedric Price The Birth of the Intelligent Building; William Gibson Neuromancer; Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari A Thousand Plateaux: Capitalism and Schizophrenia; Donna Haraway A Cyborg Manifesto; K Eric Drexler Engines of Abundance; Greg Bear Queen of Angels; William Gibson and Bruce Sterling The Difference Engine; Howard Rheingold The Origins of Drama and the Future of Fun; Manuel De Landa Policing the Spectrum; Marcos Novak Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace; Daniel C Dennett An Empirical Theory of the Mind: The Evolution of Consciousness; Neal Stephenson Snow Crash; Steven Levy The Strong Claim; Roger Lewin Edge of Chaos Discovered; Jeff Noon Stash Riders; Erik Davis Techgnosis; Magic, Memory and the Angels of Information; Scott Bukatman Terminal Resistance; Anne Balsamo Feminism for the Incurably Informed; Sherry Turkle Constructions and Reconstructions of the Self in Virtual Reality; Kevin Kelly An Open Universe; Greg Egan Permutation City; William Mitchell Soft Cities; Karen A Franck When I Enter Virtual Reality, What Body will I Leave Behind?; John Frazer A Natural Model for Architecture; Nicholas Negroponte Iconographics; Stelarc Towards the Post Human; John Perry Barlow A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace; Mark Dery Robocopulation: Sex Times Technology Equals the Future; Hans Moravec The Senses Have No Future; Michael Heim The Virtual Reality of the Tea Ceremony; Anthony Dunne Hertzian Space; Margaret Wertheim The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante

Neil Spiller is Reader in Architecture and Digital Theory at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. He has written widely on cyberspace and is also author of Digital Dreams: Architecture and the New Alchemic Technologies (1998).

' - serves as an excellent introduction to the potentially alienating and over-mystified world of virtual reality. - this book presents what may be considered as the emerging classic texts that offer the reader a grounding in this ungrounded subject. The work is not aimed at a purely architectural audience. In drawing from familiar texts such as William Gibson's 'Neuroamancer', and more surprising contributions such as the EM Forster extract from 'The Machine Stops', it approaches the subject from a variety of fields and introduces more weighty non-fiction themes such as scientific discovery, philosophy, metaphysics and gender politics. It is a very easy book to read; each of the extracts are accompanied by a preface by Spiller that provides helpful cross-references between the chronological extracts.' (Building Design) 'Spiller says: 'This book introduces the principal characters and concepts, providing a framework into which to place further ideas and discoveries.' It is exactly that.' (Architects' Journal) 'Spiller's compilation of contemporary and historical texts plots the emergence of the cyber-imagination in literature and fiction. The book could easily have fallen into the minefield of obfuscation that so often dogs attempts to encapsulate hip critical concepts, but happily it does the exact opposite, delineating its surprisingly extended lineage in the history of ideas, while throwing helpful light on to its inner complexities. - After reading this excellent anthology, you will either ditch your PC - gateway to the infinity that is cyberspace - or buy a hundred more and disappear up your own hard drive.' (Modern Painters) ' even wearing cybernetician's hat I find Spiller's Cyber Reader fascinating - [his] commentary if one of the most interesting aspects of this book - Spiller's selection is quite wonderful. His book is remarkable: for the individual items in it, and for their articulated collection together.' Ranulph Glanville, Architectural Design, 2004