Anarchist in the Library

A radical new take on the coming battle over information - based on a new social structure that is as old as gossip, but which thanks to the internet, is just coming to town From Napster to Total Information Awareness to flash mobs, the ongoing debate over the role of information technology in our lives has revolved around a single question: how closely does cyberspace conform to the accustomed rules and behaviour patterns of the real world, and how much do we want it to conform? Siva Vaidhyanathan enters this debate with a seminal new insight: while we’ve been busy debating how to make cyberspace imitate the world, the world has been busy imitating cyberspace. More and more of our social, political and religious activities are modelling themselves after the World Wide Web. A committed anarchist, Vaidhyanathan shows how the key information structure of our time is the ‘peer-to-peer network’. These networks have always existed - gossip is one example, as is word-of-mouth advertising - but with the rise of electronic communication, they are suddenly coming into their own. And they are drawing the outlines of a battle for information that will determine much of the culture and politics of our century. Everything from culture to terrorism and extremist politics, to religion will be affected. The Anarchist in the Library is a radically original look at how this battle defines on of the major fault lines of 21st century civilization.