Internet and Web Technology Books

    Good books in no particular order

As you can probably tell I like O'Reilly books. I appreciate their often terse approach. I often find that the Wrox tomes (gosh they are so big) are of more practical use, although they can be hard to get hold of, which is not unsurprising as books in this field do fade rather quickly as new versions of just about everything arrives at a rapid pace. That said, if one translates the examples from, say PHP4 to PHP5, these can still be valuable sources.

It is slightly alarming how many books (and developers) overcomplicate what is, or should be, perfectly straightforward. Even with some of the above texts, there is a pattern in which the last third of the book is unnecessary and confusing. Again, this is understandable, publishers pressing authors to deliver words in a short timescale, authors holding down a real job while writing books more for love than for money. O'Reilly tend not to fall into this trap, being prepared to publish relatively thin books. Also Wrox, presumably because they employ a whole team to write each tome. What I am trying to convey here is; there are a lot of pretty unhelpful texts being published and even the good books are less than perfect. If you find that what you are reading makes little sense, it is probably not a failing on your part, it may just be not well written, or perhaps expressed in a language that is unsuitable for you, in which case, stop reading and pick up a different book.

Less is more, keep it simple, stuff has a habit of growing and becoming more complex all by itself. Our task is to refactor and simplify wherever possible.

    Not strictly about WWW but good reads anyway...

• Open Sources Di Bono, Ockman & Stone eds, O'Reilly 1999
• The Cathedral and the Bazaar Eric S Raymond, O'Reilly 2001
• Computers as Theatre Brenda Laurel, Addison Wesley 2013
• Hamlet on the Holodeck Janet H Murray, MIT Press 1998
• Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business Neil Postman, Viking Press 1986
• Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology Neil Postman, Viking Press 1993
• Untangling the Web Aleks Krotoski, Faber & Faber 2013
• Now for Then: How to Face the Digital Future without Fear Ben Hammersley, Hodder 2013
• From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: What You Really Need to Know About the Internet John Naughton, Quercus 2012
• The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember Nicholas Carr, Atlantic 2011
• Law and the Internet Lilian Edwards, Hart 2009
• Information Technology Law: The Law and Society Andrew Murray, OUP 2013
• Making Laws for Cyberspace Chris Reed, Random House 2012
• The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few James Surowiecki, OUP 2005

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