Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web

Be the first to write a review

Overview

The Web doesn't exist in space, yet we talk about going to sites, entering them, and leaving. Diaries move online and suddenly they're more about creating selves than writing about them. Web sites don't have fences, yet a site for auction hunters was found to have trespassed on eBay, a metaphorical offense for which it paid a very real price. Companies invest heavily in professional, polished Web sites, but the Web rewards sites that revel in imperfection. Bits are the "atoms" of the Web, but they have no weight,...
See more details below
Available through our Marketplace sellers.
See All Options
Other sellers (Hardcover)
  • All (31) from $1.99   
  • New (5) from $2.85   
  • Used (26) from $1.99   
Close
Sort by
Page 1 of 1
Showing All
Note: Marketplace items are not eligible for any BN.com coupons and promotions
$2.85
bluehouse
Seller since 2013

Feedback rating:

(46)

Condition:

New — never opened or used in original packaging.

Like New — packaging may have been opened. A "Like New" item is suitable to give as a gift.

Very Good — may have minor signs of wear on packaging but item works perfectly and has no damage.

Good — item is in good condition but packaging may have signs of shelf wear/aging or torn packaging. All specific defects should be noted in the Comments section associated with each item.

Acceptable — item is in working order but may show signs of wear such as scratches or torn packaging. All specific defects should be noted in the Comments section associated with each item.

Used — An item that has been opened and may show signs of wear. All specific defects should be noted in the Comments section associated with each item.

Refurbished — A used item that has been renewed or updated and verified to be in proper working condition. Not necessarily completed by the original manufacturer.

New
Brand new.

Ships from: acton, MA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Standard, 48 States
$4.49
thevillagebookstore
Seller since 2013

Feedback rating:

(59)

Condition: New
0738205435

Ships from: North Dartmouth, MA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$5.95
Marysmarket
Seller since 2007

Feedback rating:

(147)

Condition: New
New Hardcopy with Dust Jacket .. "Someday someone was going to notice that the Internet is not just virtual, but instead connects to and fundamentally affects, society... weaves ... an account of the places in our social and conceptual fabric where the Internet will pull, and possibly tear. This is not a book about the Internet and society; it is about society, marked with the net." Read more Show Less

Ships from: Atlanta, GA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$10.55
Poverty Hill Books IL
Seller since 2007

Feedback rating:

(74)

Condition: New
2002-03 Hardcover New HARDCOVER, BRAND NEW COPY, Perfect Shape, No Black Remainder Mark,

Ships from: La Grange, IL

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$45.00
bluehouse
Seller since 2013

Feedback rating:

(46)

Condition: New
Brand new.

Ships from: acton, MA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Standard, 48 States
Page 1 of 1
Showing All
Close
Sort by
Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory Of The Web

Available on NOOK devices and apps  
  • Nook Devices
  • NOOK HD/HD+ Tablet
  • NOOK
  • NOOK Color
  • NOOK Tablet
  • Tablet/Phone
  • NOOK for Windows 8 Tablet
  • NOOK for iOS
  • NOOK for Android
  • NOOK Kids for iPad
  • PC/Mac
  • NOOK for Windows 8
  • NOOK Study
  • NOOK for Web

Want a NOOK? Explore Now

This digital version does not exactly match the hardcover displayed here.
NOOK Book (eBook)
$10.06
BN.com price
(Save 39%)$16.50 List Price

More About This Book

Overview

The Web doesn't exist in space, yet we talk about going to sites, entering them, and leaving. Diaries move online and suddenly they're more about creating selves than writing about them. Web sites don't have fences, yet a site for auction hunters was found to have trespassed on eBay, a metaphorical offense for which it paid a very real price. Companies invest heavily in professional, polished Web sites, but the Web rewards sites that revel in imperfection. Bits are the "atoms" of the Web, but they have no weight, no size and no real existence.

These anomalies are just a few that show how uncomfortable the fit between the Web and the real world is -- and how deeply weird the ordinary life of the Web is. In this one-of-a-kind book of social commentary, David Weinberger takes us beyond the hype, revealing what is truly revolutionary about this new medium. Just as Marshall McLuhan forever altered our view of broadcast media, Weinberger shows that the Web is transforming not only social institutions but also bedrock concepts of our world such as space, time, self, knowledge -- even reality itself. The Web would be important enough if it hooked up our species on a global scale. But, Weinberger argues, it is doing much more than that. Unlike previous technologies such as the phone or fax, the Web is a permanent public space that gathers value every time someone posts a Web page, responds on a discussion board, or replies to a mail list. More and more of our lives together are being lived in this new, second world that intersects the real world in ways we have only begun to understand.

Weinberger introduces us to the denizens of this second world, people like Zannah, whose online diary turns self-revelation into play; Tim Bray, whose map of the Web reveals what's at the heart of the new Web space; and Danny Yee and Claudiu Popa, part of the new breed of Web experts we trust despite their lack of obvious qualifications. Through these stories of life on the Web, an insightful take on some familiar -- and some unfamiliar -- Web sites, and a pervasive sense of humor, Weinberger is the first to put the Web into the social and intellectual context we need to begin assessing its true impact on our lives. The irony, according to Weinberger, is that this seemingly weird new technology is more in tune with our authentic selves than is the modern world. Because the Web foils our conventional assumptions about concepts like space and time and self, we are led back to a more authentic view of what it means to be a person sharing a world with others -- whether it's the world of the Web or the real world of atoms. Our experience on the Web enables us to recapture the truth of our experience of the real world. Funny, provocative, and ultimately hopeful, Small Pieces Loosely Joined makes us look at the Web as never before.

Read More Show Less

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble
"The Web has not been hyped enough." That startling contention is at the heart of this paradigm-setting book. According to Cluetrain Manifesto coauthor David Weinberger, the Web is a new world that we're just beginning to inhabit. Noting that new worlds create new people, he explains how the Web is hitting us and how this distance-negating medium is extending our perceptions. Quick, potent, and virtually indescribable.
Los Angeles Times
For the brief and shining hours that I held this book in my hands, I believed that all was possible.
NationalJournal.com
Weinberger's analysis is optimistic, full of enthusiasm for both the Web and human nature in general.
Netsurfer Digest
Good reading for fans of post-modern culture.
From The Critics
Weinberger offers a thoughtful commentary on how the Web is so different from conventional information sources.
Publishers Weekly
Weinberger (coauthor, The Cluetrain Manifesto) mixes popular philosophy and middle-aged-white-male experience to explore his simple Internet thesis: the Web permits people to connect based on soul, not body, and the importance of the Web is not economic, but spiritual. A philosophy professor turned marketing guy turned writer, Weinberger boasts an extremely likable mainstream intellectual persona, flashes of insight and genuine literary talent. But the aspect of his personality that drives this book his first solo effort is his tendency to question. "Yes, I am undeniably a 45-55 white suburban male, but it's demeaning to see it put down on paper as if that made me like every other 45-55 white guy trapped in the suburbs," he says, in a passage about demographics gathered by scheming marketers. "And while it may be statistically true that we 45-55 white suburban males will boost our spending on erasable pens if we see a sexy babe touch one to her lips in an ad, we resent the notion that we're programmable." With touchy-feely chapter titles like "Perfection," "Togetherness," "Matter" and "Hope," Weinberger leads readers through an exploration of the Web's implications beyond Amazon.com. And if his concepts at times smack of New Age sensitivity, they are, in a way, accurate. Weinberger, a frequent commentator on NPR's All Things Considered, celebrates the Internet's gift to its users: permission to be an individual in a virtual world we can tailor to our passionate, idea-driven taste. In writing about the Web, Weinberger has written about himself his own soul and his own unwieldy and evolving comprehension of the world. Agents, David Miller and Lisa Adams. (May) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A Web visionary's largely successful attempt to place the new medium within a social and cultural context. As the publisher of the Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization, a contributor to Wired , and a commentator on NPR's All Things Considered, Weinberger is in the thick of the ever-changing brave new geography-less world of the World Wide Web. Though his subtitle is a tad premature, his presentation remains straightforward, avoiding the McLuhanesque convolutions that embellished, and often obscured, attempts to understand the previous new medium of television. Tracing Web history back to the 1993 development of Mosaic, a progenitor of Netscape, Weinberger looks at the effects the Internet has had on every institution it touches, from business, to education, to government. Terming the Web both a "wanker's paradise" and a "collective, global work of literature," the author concludes that, the dot-com implosion aside, Web hype was not "unwarranted, only misdirected." He drops tantalizing statistics regarding the Web, such as its being responsible for a 28 percent drop in TV viewing, or that at any given moment there are ten billion "bytes in flight," the equivalent of 30,000 books, in the wires of Internet infrastructure. The overall focus, however, is on the social and cultural ramifications of a medium "constantly in the throes of self-invention." Conceding that the Web is "profoundly unmanaged" by design, he goes on to describe a realm where nearness is based, not on contiguity, but on similarity of interests, where, in a paraphrase of Andy Warhol's bon mot, "everyone will be famous to fifteen people." At the opposite end of the spectrum from the pointy-headed digerati elite who decrythe usurpation of the Internet by hoi polloi, Weinberger is a democrat who sees the Web not as a medium of mass stupefaction like TV but as a new and intense form of social interaction. He concludes on the hopeful note that the Web can be a "place free of what's been holding back our better selves." The premises here are ultimately neither radical nor obtuse, and readers with a general familiarity with the Web will be prepared to understand these coherent and cogent arguments.
Read More Show Less

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780738205434
  • Publisher: Basic Books
  • Publication date: 3/27/2002
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 240
  • Product dimensions: 5.74 (w) x 8.46 (h) x 0.88 (d)

Meet the Author

David Weinberger is the publisher of JOHO (Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization). Co-author of the best-selling The Cluetrain Manifesto, he is a commentator on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" and has written for a wide variety of publications, including Wired, the New York Times, and Smithsonian.
Read More Show Less

Table of Contents

Preface vii
1 A New World 1
2 Space 27
3 Time 57
4 Perfection 71
5 Togetherness 95
6 Knowledge 121
7 Matter 147
8 Hope 173
Notes 197
Acknowledgments 207
Index 209
Read More Show Less

Customer Reviews

Be the first to write a review
( 0 )
Rating Distribution

5 Star

(0)

4 Star

(0)

3 Star

(0)

2 Star

(0)

1 Star

(0)

Your Rating:

Review Guidelines
Add Recommendations
Your Name: Create a Pen Name or

Barnes & Noble.com Review Rules

Our reader reviews allow you to share your comments on titles you liked, or didn't, with others. By submitting an online review, you are representing to Barnes & Noble.com that all information contained in your review is original and accurate in all respects, and that the submission of such content by you and the posting of such content by Barnes & Noble.com does not and will not violate the rights of any third party. Please follow the rules below to help ensure that your review can be posted.

Reviews by Our Customers Under the Age of 13

We highly value and respect everyone's opinion concerning the titles we offer. However, we cannot allow persons under the age of 13 to have accounts at BN.com or to post customer reviews. Please see our Terms of Use for more details.

What to exclude from your review:

Please do not write about reviews, commentary, or information posted on the product page. If you see any errors in the information on the product page, please send us an email.

Reviews should not contain any of the following:

  • - HTML tags, profanity, obscenities, vulgarities, or comments that defame anyone
  • - Time-sensitive information such as tour dates, signings, lectures, etc.
  • - Single-word reviews. Other people will read your review to discover why you liked or didn't like the title. Be descriptive.
  • - Comments focusing on the author or that may ruin the ending for others
  • - Phone numbers, addresses, URLs
  • - Pricing and availability information or alternative ordering information
  • - Advertisements or commercial solicitation

Reminder:

  • - By submitting a review, you grant to Barnes & Noble.com and its sublicensees the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use the review in accordance with the Barnes & Noble.com Terms of Use.
  • - Barnes & Noble.com reserves the right not to post any review -- particularly those that do not follow the terms and conditions of these Rules. Barnes & Noble.com also reserves the right to remove any review at any time without notice.
  • - See Terms of Use for other conditions and disclaimers.
Search for Products You'd Like to Recommend

Recommend other products that relate to your review. Just search for them below and share!

Create a Pen Name

Your Pen Name is your unique identity on BN.com. It will appear on the reviews you write and other website activities. Your Pen Name cannot be edited, changed or deleted once submitted.

 
Your Pen Name can be any combination of alphanumeric characters (plus - and _), and must be at least two characters long.

Continue Anonymously
Sort by: Showing all of 2 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted May 2, 2012

    Whitefoot

    Ghostpelt? Please be here... I... I miss you... *quietly* I love you... ~Whitefoot

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted January 6, 2011

    No text was provided for this review.

Sort by: Showing all of 2 Customer Reviews
If you find inappropriate content, please report it to Barnes & Noble
Why is this product inappropriate?
Comments (optional)