The Big Switch: Further Reading

For anyone looking to learn more about the subjects discussed in The Big Switch, here's a list of sources and related readings, with links to Amazon.com

The rise and consequences of the electric utility

David Nye's Electrifying America and Consuming Power provide very readable, wide-ranging accounts of the revolution in power supply.

For a more technical discussion of the development of the electric utility industry around the world, see Thomas P. Hughes's Networks of Power.

Samuel Insull's rise and fall are traced in Forrest McDonald's Insull. See also Insull's Memoirs.

For a discussion of the effects of electrification and other technological developments on the lives of women, see Ruth Schwartz Cohen's More Work for Mother.

Wolfgang Schivelbusch gives a fascinating account of the history of lighting in Disenchanted Night.

The history and meaning of automated data processing

Paul Ceruzzi's History of Modern Computing and Martin Campbell-Kelly's From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog provide good overviews of the development of hardware and software, respectively.

James Beniger's The Control Revolution is a brilliant work that places data processing in a broad historical perspective.

Katie Hafner's Where Wizards Stay Up Late describes the origins of the Internet.

Tim Berners-Lee describes how he invented the World Wide Web in Weaving the Web.

For discussions of the hidden workings of the Web, see Milton Mueller's Ruling the Root and Alexander Galloway's Protocol.

For a fascinating look at the history and future of artificial intelligence, see George Dyson's Darwin Among the Machines.

Chris Anderson examines some of the unusual economic effects of the Net in The Long Tail.

Questioning technology

Norbert Wiener, author of the influential Cybernetics, wrestles with the implications of information technology in The Human Use of Human Beings.

Understanding Media contains Marshall McLuhan's famous speculations on "electric media."

David Noble looks askance at technological utopianism in The Religion of Technology, and Imagining Tomorrow is a collection of essays on that theme.

Fred Turner traces the connection between hippies and geeks in From Counterculture to Cyberculture.

Who Controls the Internet?, by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, places the Net in a geopolitical perspective.

Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks makes the case for online "social production."

Many cultural critiques of the Net have been published, including Neil Postman's Technopoly, Sven Birkerts's The Gutenberg Elegies. Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur, and Lee Siegel's new Against the Machine. For an optimistic view of the Net's effects, see David Weinberger's Small Pieces Loosely Joined and Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital, among others.