I recently finished reading The Dream Machine: J.C.R Licklider and the Revolution that created the Personal Computer. And I promise to write a review as soon as possible. Until then, I am going to stop at Chapters tonight and find Howard Rheingold’s newest book.
Cory Doctorow has written an excellent review of Howard Rheingold’s Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. The book discusses the "emergent ad-hoc networks of people who coalesce out of the technosphere and do suff". It is an interesting look at the technologies and social factors that make decentralized technologies like social networks and the Web popular. The book discusses the role that packet-switched networks play in enabling this unpredictable future.