Being Digital

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and both too optimistic at the same time.
Review: As an Information Science minor this book has been mentioned many times and I finally had a chance to read it. Even though it is noe 8 years old it still is very useful, his theory of the change from atoms to bits is revolutionary and with it he has named what has been going on: the move to a more and more digital world, whether we like it or not. I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in the new digital world.

There is however one major flaw in this book, although he briefly mentions it in the epilogue. What are the broader societal complications? Nergroponte makes it look like our lives will be perfect and easier. I agree in part, but there are some things to be critical of.

Many people in the media seem to be happy with what I would call customized news; you only get the news you want. But what do we want? Doesn't news we hadn't thought of before increase our knowlegde of the world as well? If we only want to read left or rightwing editorials, will we ever understand what the other side thinks? Won't we be molded into a certain way of thinking?

There is a funny part about the digitial sister in law, a computer that knows what you like and can therefore tell you which movie you should see. What about moods? surprises? Won't digital machines tell us what to like this way?

Read it however, even though you might not like it, it's a classic, if only because of its influence.

Rating:
Summary: Easily read, thought provoking book on Digital Age
Review: Book Report on Being Digital, by Nicholas NegroponteNicholas Negroponte is the kind of individual who runs around the world in perpetual Scan mode. He is constantly putting things together in unusual combinations, seeing things that others have not, and inserting ideas that cause one to think, 'Where did he come up with that stuff?' Negroponte is the Director of the Media Lab at MIT. This Lab was founded when I was an undergraduate there, and had the reputation of containing far-out, creative people thinking far-out creative thoughts about the way the world perceives things. Being Digital is a quick read. The ideas inside are explained clearly and succinctly, as if he is talking to an intelligent layperson. (My smart PC just suggested that layperson is spelled wrong and suggests lepers as a good substitute.) This is not dense Stuart Kauffman prose, but more the level of 'Discover' magazine. As such, it is completely accessible. You can read it on a plane and not miss anything, but that does not lessen the quality of his ideas. For example, in discussing how to pack a lot of information into a CD, he mentions that you 'can change the color of the laser from red to blue, thereby shortening the wavelength and increasing the density by a factor of four.' The central thesis of the book can be stated in four words: 'Move bits, not atoms.' Negroponte's considers that bits come in such a nice, portable form that moving them around is an effortless, borderless and unregulated matter. Atoms, on the other hand, require Fedex, trucks and boats, are subject to taxation at border crossings, and take up room in airliner overhead compartments. 'The information superhighway is about the global movement of weightless bits at the speed of light.' When I ran E&Y's campus recruiting program, I developed back trouble from hauling around 40+ pounds of resumes all the time. When colleges began sending resume books on disks, it was wonderful being liberated from what people used to call my hernia kit. About half the book is a summary of how the bit business came to be, and what state it is in today. The second half talks about where all this could be going. Negroponte discusses the 'five paths for information and entertainment to get into the home: satellite, terrestrial broadcast, cable, telephone and packaged media (all those atoms like cassettes, CD-ROM and print).' These face some unwieldy regulation that hampers their utility and physical limits, like bandwidth. Then there is the whole matter of interface design--how you interact with your technology? 'Not only do I not want all the features on my telephone; I don't want to dial the telephone at all. Why can't telephone designers understand that none of us want to dial telephones? We want to reach people on the telephone!' The problem is that human voices are remarkably difficult to interpret by a computer. And humans use so many different languages. Negroponte develops the subject of the 'interface agent', that will be a highly personalized personal computer. 'The best metaphor I can conceive of for a human-computer interface is that of a well-trained English butler. . . . Enough people believe that such interface agents are buildable.' From here, he is into a discussion of what will probably be coming along down the information highway that I found the most exciting part of the book. 'Imagine a computer display of news stories with a knob that, like a volume control, allows you to crank personalization up or down.' He concludes with a list of dangerous things that lie ahead, but ultimately concludes that the digital direction is a very positive one and that humans will be able to solve the social challenges that are involved in increasing digitalization. Negroponte is clearly an optimist, but seems to be a very reality-based one. Some of his ideas: * 'Copyright law is totally out of date. It is a Gutenberg artifact. Since it is a reactive process, it will probably have to break down completely before it is corrected.' * 'Being digital will change the nature of mass media from a process of pushing bits at people to one of allowing people (or their computers) to pull at them. This is a radical change, because our entire concept of media is one of successive layers of filtering, which reduce information and entertainment to a collection of 'top stories' or 'best-sellers' to be thrown at different 'audiences'. . . The information industry will become more of a boutique business . . . but only if the interface between people and their computers improves to the point where talking to your computer is as easy as talking to another human being.' * 'My argument, perhaps arrogant, is that if you have to test something carefully to see the difference it makes, then it is not making enough of a difference in the first place.' * 'The fact that TV Guide has been known to make bigger profits than all four networks combined suggests that the value of information about information can be of greater value than the information itself.' * 'I was in an audience of 1200 people who were asked to start clapping and try to clap in unison. . . within less than two seconds, the room was clapping with a single beat. Try it yourself; even with much smaller groups the result can be startling. The surprise shown by participants brings home how little we understand or even recognize the emergence of coherence from the activity of independent agents.' * 'On-demand information will dominate digital life. We will ask explicitly and implicitly for what we want, when we want it. This will require a radical rethinking of advertiser-supported programming.' * 'I think that videocassette-rental stores will go out of business in less than ten years.' * 'The fax machine is a serious blemish on the information landscape, a step backward, whose ramifications will be felt for a long time.' * The difference between a primitive and an uneducated person? 'Primitive people are not uneducated at all, they simply use different means to convey their knowledge from generation to generation, within a supportive and tightly knit social fabric. By contrast, an uneducated person is the product of a modern society whose fabric has unraveled and whose system is not supportive.' * Why can't UPC codes radiate data, too? *'Most examples of 'intelligent environments' I have seen are missing the ability to sense human presence. Future rooms will know if you . . . just took the dog for a walk. A phone would never ring. If you are not there, it won't ring because you are not there. . . A toaster should not be able to burn toast.' *'The only hazard (to the Web) is government in the form of politicians who want to control it. Usually under the banner of sanitizing the Net for children, people all over the world are trying to censor its contents. Worse, some countries, including the United States, want to make sure there is some means for them to listen into messages, like wiretapping. If that does not give you the willies, it should. Having less than the best security and privacy would be a grave error. Because of its digital nature, the digital world is potentially far more secure than the analog world. But we have to want it to be so. We have to knowingly create a safe digital environment.' Chip Saltsman ([e-mail])

Rating:
Summary: Detoothing the digital tiger
Review: I find myself to be a bit of a history person. Not for a major, but for fun. Although I was quit familiar with HDTV and its development in Japan and within the United States, I found many interesting facts that guided my understand of the history of the technologies of the internet and now included a better understanding of how they worked. Negroponte, has undoubtedly given a hard technical language easy to understand terms. With easy to understand illustrations, in comparing data backup to digital gridlock on a highway, and down to earth comments that one can easily grasp no matter the computer skills involved. He has done the amazing task of detothing the digital tiger.

His book sends us through history, to the beginning of communication and guides us on a journey through the digital world. From black-and-white television to HDTV, from CD-ROM to the use of bandwidth, and how even that word can change its meaning. Negroponte takes the fear of using the Internet away and makes its' use like charting a calm lake. The book has obvious signs of its age, but where it would supposedly drop off, for the time in which it was written, Negroponte takes giant steps forward in telling and accurately predicting the directions in which the Internet would go. His insights on e-commerce, encryption codes and daily uses and services that a connected world can offer were amazingly insightful. From a world were driving directions are but a click away, where your refrigerator calls for service before it brakes and operating systems that cater to your every need.

Being Digital was an easy to read book that allowed me to grasp the basics, and harder parts of the Internet that in a lot of ways, previously confused me. I feel that I have gained a more technical background, and won't have that confused look on my face the next time on Jeopardy when a question related to the Internet is asked.

Rating:
Summary: the future didn't come true.
Review: I have to say that this book could be very interesting if we were in 1995 or 1996. But from the modern perspective, this book is too simplified and optimistic. I can't deny that some anticipations in this book may come true in the future, but obviously, not now, in 2002.

Rating:
Summary: Kind of good for none techies
Review: I like this book but must take it with a grain of salt. It was joining the dot.com bubble so to speak although I had known of the author shortly before the 1990's. I like that my girl friend enjoying listening to the audio book verison. She isn't much of a cyberpsace person but she and I both found the story to be positive and slightly uplifting. Not very difficult to read too in the hard copy and it has an attractive cover.

Rating:
Summary: Totally trivial and poorly written
Review: I read this book a few years ago - correction - I read it about half way through and got so disgusted by its triviality of content and terrible prose that I flung it back into my bookcase.
I largely agree with "A reader from Lakewood, CO United States" and can't comprehend why anyone could have a positive opinion about this book.
The book has some significance, be it a very negative one, viz. that its bad, cobbled together content, by, mind you, the man in charge of the MIT Media Lab, symbolizes the typical ignorance of many scientists regarding the historical, socio-cultural context in which new technology should be viewed.
I would recommend a crash course in Lewis Mumford's great ideas, as discussed in Technics and Civilization and the Myth of the Machine, to all students embarking on high-tech research and development.

Rating:
Summary: Relevant and interesting
Review: I've read this book about 3 years late! Yet its arguments are as exciting and relevant as they were 3 years ago. This book is NOT really about fancy visions of the future. Rather it is a hard hitting look at the suboptimal thinking and quick-fix utilization of todays technologies; instead of a truly revolutionary approach that is needed.
A simple example is the authors lucid example of a doctor from the 19th Century walking into todays hospitals and being whammed by the advances. But the same cannot be said for a teacher of the 19th century walking into todays classrooms... except for the syllabus. Similar examples abound in the fact that technologies of devices are changing only incrementally to accomodate the bandwidth revolution, but the change needed is a quantum leap, which we are not doing. The author does portray various visions of the future where the full effects of technology would be used, and is clear in pointing out that these are not idle impractical fantasies.
Quite a very good book, and for those looking for a far more cohesive futuristic book bordering on Sci-Fi, a book well worth reading is "Visions" by Michio Kaku.

Rating:
Summary: A cheerful, but uncritical, look at being wired...
Review: MIT Media Lab's darling, Nicholas Negroponte is _the_ pundit of the digital era. One of his most often quoted analogies, "atoms to bits", is explained in this well written look at the future. With verve and clear vision, Negroponte examines the effect of being wired, and (correctly) emphasizes content above all. He makes concise statements without techno-babble, and does some small debunking of current myths. The work is flawed by the one-sided, totally optimistic look at technology. It is almost as bad as Stoll's raving in _Silicon Snake Oil_, and the need for an unbiaised, critical opinion is clear. Regardless, _being digital_ is a great book to tell venture capitalists to read before they invest in your Internet capable weenie roaster

Rating:
Summary: diary of an egomaniac
Review: Negroponte is the man who created Wired Magazine and then had them put his face on the cover and give him made-up awards. It is hard to point to any important discovery coming from him or the MIT Media Lab, except perhaps the invention of hype.

Rating:
Summary: Negroponte is DA boss!
Review: Or should I say "Negroponte rules!"

For those who don't know who he is, we're talking about the man who has spearheaded the efforts to make out of MIT's Media Lab one of the state-of-the-art technology workshops of the world. What those guys are working there is what you and I might own or work with (as a gadget, for instance) in a few years, depending on your wlak of life. These guys are light-years ahead of us. And Negroponte is even ahead of them!

If you were a follower of Negroponte's last-page articles in Wired magazine for several years, you might not find the book all that new, but even then, you will have to acknowledge that he has a unique and very intuitive way to explain digital technology to people who are not tech savvy. He reminds me at times of Nobel-prize winner Richard Feynman in that sense.

Anyway... Think of this book, whether you are a techie or not, as a statement written five years ago about what's to come. Some of the things he refers to in the book have already occurred, which makes it even more exciting: it means that he's right, and those things that have yet to come will definitely be part of our lives sooner that we can maybe imagine.

Buy it and you will devour it in a day, I predict!