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Web Sites (all sites will open in a new window)
Amazing Picture Machine is an index to graphical resources on the Internet from the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. Provides help for finding pictures, maps, and other graphic resources on the Internet, plus some lesson ideas for using them. You can access these pictures by entering key words into a search engine or go the web sites of the main archives that provide the pictures.
Poetry Tiles is similar to magnetic poetry. You can drag and drop words of your choice to form lines of verse. Let your verbal creativity have free reign!
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Books
Technology Humor
Dave Barry in Cyberspace by Dave Barry, 1996. Trust Dave Barry, middle-class America's chronicler of the absurdities and inanities of daily life, to provide the authoritative funnyman's guide to life with computers. Barry is sometimes insightful, as when he notes the ridiculous number of keystrokes needed to actually write something, often hilarious, as in his send-up of technological support hotlines, and occasionally genuinely indignant. This book is the perfect gift for anyone who, like many of us, can't live with computers and can't live without them.
The Dilbert Future: Thriving on Stupidity in the 21st Century by Scott Adams, 1997. Take a look into Scott Adams' crystal ball and catch a glimpse of the future of technology, democracy, aging, capitalism, marketing, jobs, relationships, and (of course) work, illustrated with the doings of Dilbert and the gang. So what does the Dilbert future hold in store? Rest assured that it will bear no resemblance to "Star Trek," because "Star Trek" didn't take the stupidity and selfishness of humans into account.
Science Fiction
Generally, we have a hard time finding the time for recreational reading. Some of us have found a few science fiction authors who, in addition to being excellent storytellers, have ideas that point to possible directions informational technologies might take.
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, 1995. Decades into the future, near the ancient city of Shanghai, a brilliant nano-technologist named John Percival Hackworth has broken the rigorous moral code of his tribe, the powerful neo-Victorians, by making an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art interactive device called "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer."
Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling, 1988. Slightly dated science fiction about the near future can be fun, especially when it evokes a strange, chaotic, and dangerous world that's uncomfortably close to our present one. Bruce Sterling's book is a thrilling blend of high tech and low humanity. The glue that binds together this world of data pirates, mercenaries, nanotechnology, weaponry, and post-millennial voodoo is the global electronic net. You'll find jarring references to pre-Microsoft Windows computer technology, the Soviet Union, and that fancy new wonder machine--the fax. But this book has enough cool stuff to keep even a jaded cyberpunk interested. The characters are far more than mere constructs used to show off the technology, and the plot is fast, complicated, and mysterious. Veteran Sterling fans will enjoy this taste of his pre-fame style.
Neuromancer by William Gibson, 1994. Here is the novel that started it all, launching the cyberpunk generation, and the first novel to win the holy trinity of science fiction: the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award. With Neuromancer, William Gibson introduced the world to cyberspace - and science fiction has never been the same.
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, 1993. >From the opening line of this breakthrough cyberpunk novel, Neal Stephenson plunges the reader into a not-too-distant future where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the United States exists as a patchwork of corporate-franchise city-states, and the Internet--incarnate as the Metaverse--looks something like last year's hype would lead you to believe it should. Enter Hiro Protagonist--hacker, samurai swordsman, and pizza-delivery driver. When his best friend fries his brain on a new designer drug called Snow Crash and his beautiful, brainy ex-girlfriend asks for his help, what's a guy with a name like that to do? He rushes to the rescue. A breakneck-paced 21st-century novel, Snow Crash interweaves everything from Sumerian myth to visions of a postmodern civilization on the brink of collapse. Faster than the speed of television and a whole lot more fun, Snow Crash is the portrayal of a future that is bizarre enough to be plausible.
Virtual Light by William Gibson, 1993. The author of Neuromancer takes you to the vividly realized near future of 2005. Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of what used to be California. Here the millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rent-a-cop now working for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a bicycle messenger turned pick-pocket who impulsively snatches a pair of innocent-looking sunglasses. But these are no ordinary shades. What you can see through these high-tech specs can make you rich - or get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the run, zeroing in on the digitalized heart of DatAmerica, where pure information is the greatest high. And a mind can be a terrible thing to crash.
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