This book addresses how computers affect people's everyday lives. Using actual situations and problems that people have encountered with current software applications, this book offers academics ways to examine how new situations are created through computer use. It contains some of the very first papers on very important topics including the AEGIS disaster, the intriguing new world of MUD environments, and community networks, including a study of Community Memory in Berkeley, possibly the world's first community computer system. The first half contains critical studies, in which the authors explain ways of describing real situations where people are already using computers. This situations are often problematic and much more complicated than the scenarios that the designers envisioned when designing the system. The second half of the book contains constructive studies, reporting experiences in trying to build systems in new ways, with a fully developed consciousness of what people need and the interactions between computer systems and social systems.

Computing as a social practice, Philip E. Agre; reading "All About" computerization - how genre conventions shape nonfiction social analysis, Rob Kling; questions to ask and techno-fallacies to avoid in the consideration of new information technologies, Gary T. Marx; knowledge in production, Jim Davis and Michael Stack; moral issues involved in protecting software as intellectual property, Natalie Dandekar; "Virtual Reality" - really?, Thomas B. Sheridan and David Zeltzer; computerization and women's knowledge, Lucy Suchman and Brigitte Jordan; thinking about computers and schools - a sceptical view, Hank Bromley; artificial intelligence, Chris Hables Gray; mudding - social phenomena in text-based virtual realities, Pavel Curtis; cyberspace innkeeping - building online community, John Coate; community networks - building a participatory medium, Douglas Schuler; community memory - a case study in community communication, Carl Farrington and Evelyn Pine; the rainbow pages - building community with voice technology, Paul Resnik and Mel King; building community networks, Philip E. Agre; affectionate technology, David Durlach.