These essays remain fascinating, amusing, and relevant. “Most of my work in recent decades,” Rheingold says, “has focused on the consequences of digital media and networked publics. Before the digital wave came along, I wrote about a more diverse range of subjects: What causes anger? What’s it like to be in a car crash? What’s insect sex like? Do invisible airborne chemicals affect behavior? Can we control our dreams? How will people get high in the future? Will money evolve into new forms? In the second decade of the twenty-first century, these short pieces re-present my explorations during my think about anything years to a wider public who may be familiar with my work on digital culture.”

Howard Rheingold is a critic, writer, and teacher; his specialties are the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities (a term he is credited with inventing).

Among the books he has written are Net Smart: How to Thrive Online, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, Virtual Reality: The Revolutionary Technology of Computer-Generated Artificial Worlds – and How It Promises to Transform Society, Virtual Communities: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontiers, and Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology. He is a visiting lecturer, teaching classes in virtual communities and social media at Stanford University and at the University of California, Berkeley.

Excursions to the Far Side of the Mind is now available at stillpointdigital.com in both ePub (for iPads, Nooks, and most other e-readers) and .mobi (Kindle) formats. 

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