And That's the Way It Will Be: News and Information in a Digital World

Rating:
Summary: Rather a Paranoid Description of the Way Things Were
Review: I do not need to say that Christopher Harper's And That's the Way It Will Be: News and Information in a Digital World is outdated; any book attempting to forecast internet capabilities in 1997 will inevitably be so by 2002. But I do need to say that this book represents an almost sickening trend in the very field it covers. Harper's hyper-journalistic style of "shorter is better" prose, analysis and famous anecdotes collapses under its fatuity, leaving the reader with the dissatisfaction of accounting for the book's missing substance and the time spent reading it.

That said, Harper does situate the current boom of internet news services within the larger journalistic profession and that entity's concerns for its continuing role in American society. He supplies charts that measure audience interests and recommends how the internet may be tapped to cater to those interests. Through biographies of Bill Gates, Elizabeth Osder and Richard Duncan, Harper suggests tactics for continuing journalistic excellence, including exploitation of internet media capabilities and the possibility for news stories unlimited by traditional print space. Most importantly, if judged by contemporary publications (little in this area, at least in book form, has been published since 1998) he raises the question of internet ethics in relation to the increasing battle between immediacy and accuracy of what's reported, a question not foreign to American news enterprises of the past century, and Harper unfortunately lacks an answer like so many other news writers reflecting on the state of their profession.

Harper is easy to read and offers a simple overview of the "genre" of news websites, and if you can get past the constant prophesies for the collapse of AOL, the annoyance at "herky, jerky" free streaming video clips, descriptions of rounds to the parties of now defunct "dot coms," and the impending apocalypse of Y2K, it is not wholly uninteresting. It is not wholly informative either.

Rating:
Summary: Quickly outdated
Review: The highlight of this book is the series of anecdotes about the creation of various high-profile Web sites and the people behind them. Unfortunately, they lacked the depth to prevent them from being mere soundbites - quite the tease.

Enjoyable at first, once the book turns to speculation about the future of the Internet and its role, it becomes apparent that this book was penned by an old-school journalist who at best lacks the experience with the technology necessary to write about it, and at worst could be labled a technophobe.

The end result is a simplistic overview of the Internet as it relates to the media. Written in 1997, the book quickly loses credibility with the section devoted to the Y2K bug which was summarized with a statement to the effect that, no matter what we do to try to avoid it, it would definitely cause massive problems for everyone in every imaginable way, and the flippant comment about the improbability of affordable cable Internet access being made available to the public any time in the near future.

Harper is better off sticking to concrete facts. It's when he starts making unfounded predictions that his credibility - and the book - go down the drain.

Rating:
Summary: Quickly outdated
Review: The highlight of this book is the series of anecdotes about the creation of various high-profile Web sites and the people behind them. Unfortunately, they lacked the depth to prevent them from being mere soundbites - quite the tease.

Enjoyable at first, once the book turns to speculation about the future of the Internet and its role, it becomes apparent that this book was penned by an old-school journalist who at best lacks the experience with the technology necessary to write about it, and at worst could be labled a technophobe.

The end result is a simplistic overview of the Internet as it relates to the media. Written in 1997, the book quickly loses credibility with the section devoted to the Y2K bug which was summarized with a statement to the effect that, no matter what we do to try to avoid it, it would definitely cause massive problems for everyone in every imaginable way, and the flippant comment about the improbability of affordable cable Internet access being made available to the public any time in the near future.

Harper is better off sticking to concrete facts. It's when he starts making unfounded predictions that his credibility - and the book - go down the drain.