NetFuture: Technology and Human Responsibility

A publication of The Nature Institute

NetFuture is "a largely undiscovered national treasure" (Peter J. Denning, New York Times, November 25, 1999). Here is what other readers have said about NetFuture.

NetFuture is an electronic newsletter with postings every two-to-four weeks or so. It looks beyond the generally recognized "risks" of computer use such as privacy violations, unequal access, censorship, and dangerous computer glitches. It seeks especially to address those deep levels at which we half-consciously shape technology and are shaped by it. What is half-conscious can, after all, be made fully conscious, and we can take responsibility for it.

The editor of NetFuture is Steve Talbott (stevet@oreilly.com). His latest book, based on writings in NetFuture, is Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in an Age of Machines. Michael Pollan (author of The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore's Dilemma) has written of this book: "Nothing is as rare or sorely needed in our tech-enchanted culture right now as intelligent criticism of technology, and Steve Talbott is exactly the critic we've been waiting for: trenchant, sophisticated, and completely original. Devices of the Soul is an urgent and important book." You will find more information about the book here.

NetFuture is a non-profit publication and needs its readers' support. To make a contribution, click here.

Things to look for:

Perhaps the two best-received issues of the newsletter, both dealing with technology and the handicapped, were NF #92, and NF #102. A closely related piece ran in NF #117.

Some articles from NetFuture are being expanded into a collection of essays entitled, "From Mechanism to a Science of Qualities". You will find this work in progress here

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Guide to the site:

• Current issue
• Topical index to all issues
• Index to books reviewed
• Past issues and tables of contents
  • 2008 (issue #172 - current)
  • 2007 (issue #166 - 171)
  • 2006 (no issues)
  • 2005 (issue #160 - 165)
  • 2004 (issue #153 - 159)
  • 2003 (issue #141 - 152)
  • 2002 (issue #127 - 140)
  • 2001 (issue #116 - 126)
  • 2000 (issue #100 - 115)
  • 1999 (issue #82 - 99)
  • 1998 (issue #63 - 81)
  • 1997 (issue #37 - 62)
  • 1996 (issue #3 - 36)
  • 1995 (issue #1 - 2)
• Archives for NetFuture forwarding service
  • 1998
  • 1997
• Subscribe or unsubscribe to NetFuture

Associated resources:

• The Nature Institute, publisher of NetFuture. We are a non-profit research organization pursuing a qualitative science that is contextual and holistic in spirit, and ethically informed in immediate practice rather than in afterthought.
• Alliance for Childhood, a movement to protect the very idea of childhood as a time of special vulnerability, deserving of protection by caring, responsible adults.
• Confronting Technology, a reading list and resource center (maintained by Lowell Monke).
• Frequently Asked Questions on "Computerized Technology and Human Responsibility." It might instead have been entitled, "Shibboleths of the Net."
• Daily Meditations for the Computer-entranced. A series of relatively brief, highly readable columns testing your assumptions about computers and the Net.

Privacy Policy: The Nature Institute (publisher of NetFuture) will use your name and address only for communicating directly with you. We will thank financial contributors by name in our newsletter, In Context, unless you request otherwise.

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Last revision: April 22, 2008