Rating: 
Summary: Being Digital
Review: Reading the book Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte was interesting in the aspect that the book is five years old in such a fast moving industry and the book is still relevant today. Five years in the computer world may be compared to forty years in other industries. Negroponte mentions the past (atoms) and how he feels computers will take society into the future (bits). The past is being the industrial revolution and the future being the information age. As the industrial revolution changed the direction of society, the information age will change society on the same kind of scale. Possibly someday everything will be automated, all you will have to do is talk to the computer, microwave, and toaster. Past, present, and future computer technologies were discussed throughout the book. Related markets of television with the advancements with High Definition Television (HDTV), and the video industry were discussed with possible idea of where that is going. The book was full with information but seemed to be very boring. I would find myself reading a page and thinking about something else, then having to re-read the page. The book basically analyzes where we have been with computer technology and where it could possibly go. I recommend this book to people who know nothing about the past, present, and future of the computer world and to people having trouble falling to sleep at night.
Rating: 
Summary: Little value today and poorly written
Review: this book may be a few years old now...but...it still holds value for the time and bucks required to ingest this digest. negroponte is a personal hero...a person with a clue of what is coming...the nature of technology...and the mind of a culturally creative. i read this book when it came out...and just revisited it. it is a good read to give someone that might be a technophobe or in denial...it is accessible to the digitally challenged and provides a good carrot to dangle before their nose to encourage them to get engaged.in a digitized world you need to get onto the streaming media...those 0's and 1's that are shaping everything around us. if you are interested in negroponte's playground...you might add stewart brands book on The Media Lab as a trailer to this one...then you will want to go to MIT and play with the future for yourself
Rating: 
Summary: Great all-around presentation of revolutionary thinking
Review: This is one of those rare books that combines easy, enjoable reading with thought-provoking authorship. Even though this book is over 6 years old, the author's theories and predictions still hold true and give you new persective on the digital world and the future of information. A true classic!
Rating: 
Summary: The Mind Machine Matrix
Review: You're approaching the new millennium, what people are calling the digital age. You are terribly anxious, utterly ignorant. But, somewhere in the air full of technobabble, you also catch the unmistakable whiff of excitement. The excitement of a new state of being. Nicholas Negroponte's book, Being Digital, fuels that excitement, dispels your ignorance and stills your nervousness, as it unravels, explains and rationalises the digital dimension to modern life. An essential item in the baggage of anyone about to travel the information super-highway, Being Digital is not intimidating, as the future it talks about may seem to some, but exciting, like that very future will be for all. Beginning with the difference between an atom and a bit, and going on to the far reaches of futuristic multimedia, Negroponte takes you by the hand and makes you understand, appreciate and want to be a part of the inevitable era of the digital. He talks of the change from atoms to bits as being "irrevocable", and "unstoppable", and of a time when information will be "universally accessible." He gushes about your right and left cufflinks or earrings communicating with each other by "low orbiting satellites..." He sees schools changing to "become more like museums and playgrounds for children to assemble ideas and socialize..." And yet, he stops to introspect on the irony of his book itself being rendered in atoms, and not bits. "So why an old-fashioned book, Negroponte...?" Revealing the basic asceticism that lies at the core of every techno-savant like himself, Negroponte confesses, "Interactive multi-media leaves very little to the imagination...When you read a novel, much of the colour, sound and motion come from you." In another discussion about fiber versus copper and the future of bandwidth, a concern we all share about being digital, Negroponte asks, "Do we really want or need all those bits?" "New information and entertainment ser! vices are not waiting on fiber to the home; they are waiting on imagination." A welcome assurance that the digital age will still be driven by the power of the human being, that the application will drive the technology, that "being digital" won't mean "not being human". Negroponte's depth of perception and easy-going style make Being Digital an immensely readable book, a book you are expected to "read yourself into". Prophetic enunciations mingle with child-like flights of fancy (are the two that much different anyway?), difficult theory is made light of with daily ditties, and techno-jargon is the brunt of some intelligent humour ("If prizes were awarded for the best oxymorons, virtual reality would certainly be a winner."). Among the many predictions that punctuate the book (" I think of myself as an extremist when it comes to predicting and initiating change") Negroponte's statement "In a digital age, the medium is no longer the message" could well be considered the next milestone comment after McLuhan's. "He calls it commingling of bits, where you can experience your newspaper as sound, text and picture too, depending on the way you want it. And what's more, you could even choose your stories, because control will be transferred from the provider to the receiver. "Being digital will change the nature of mass media from a process of pushing bits at people to one of allowing people...to pull at them.)" Though it is devoid of illustrations throughout its 255 pages, Being Digital paints a picture. An indelible, and prophetic picture. Negroponte has interesting names for his chapters, which nudge you to read on, assured that you will not be bored with technology, but entertained by a scientist who is at once submerged by his subject and detached from it. In one such chapter, called " Place without space", he foresees the post -information age as an age when you could look out of the window in Boston and "! ;see the Alps, hear the cowbells and smell the digital manure...". You could also go to work without going to work, and remote controlled surgeries could be a reality (read virtual reality). While Being Digital definitely forebodes the fantastic, it retains a sense of realism, constantly distinguishing between the near term and the longer term. "In the nearer term, however, the brain surgeon will need to be in the same operating theater as the brain..." It is also aware of the pitfalls of the age it celebrates. In the chapter "Being digital is not enough", Negroponte says, "In the next millennium...we will all be using e-mail, provided we learn some digital decorum" - a stinging summation of the as yet uncivilised online community? Negroponte also likens the Internet to an Austrian ballroom where almost every one of the 400 guests has just learned how to dance! Being Digital is all about accepting the inevitable. Being optimistic about parts of it, and bemoaning others -"The next decade will see cases of intellectual property abuse and invasion of privacy. We will experience digital vandalism,...data thievery." Negroponte's view is that the inevitable is not imminent. It is now. "My optimism is not fueled by an anticipated invention...". For him a state of being digital is almost genetic, and like all things genetic will proliferate, from generation to generation. This is an important book. Cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary, and humanistic in its appeal, it will be found, if it's not already, on the bookshelves of the digerati (definitely), people in the media, businesses, arts, academia, government and also, strangely, among the rumpled bedclothes of the incurable joystick junkie. Such is the power of prophecy, and simplicity.
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