Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Negroponte, popular columnist for Wired magazine and founding director for the MIT Media Lab, describes how advancements in computer technology and telecommunications will transform workplaces, households, and educational institutions. He explains how this revolution will change the way we live, think, and interact with one another and with technology and foresees some mind-boggling challenges that lie ahead in developing truly global systems for delivering multimedia and other forms of digitally based information. Negroponte characterizes the development of future information delivery systems as a battle between atoms, the components of books and other physical resources, and bits, the basic building blocks of information. In 1991, he predicted the eventual demise of libraries, those vast storehouses of atoms, in favor of bit-based purveyors of information. An important work for public and academic libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/94.]-Joe Accardi, Northeastern Illinois Univ. Lib., Chicago (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Wired columnist Negroponte's look at cutting-edge technology includes his predictions about future directions of the digital age. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

Negroponte, author of a monthly column in the magazine Wired, has collected more than 100 loosely connected short essays dealing with digital devices, mainly computers. They are snappy, informative, and, at times, argumentative. Essay titles such as "Being Asynchronous," "Culture Convergence," and "The TV as Computer" indicate the range of topics the author has included. Because the range is so general, the intended audience is the general reader, computer-literate but not an electronics expert. J. Mayer; Lebanon Valley College

Booklist Review

The success of Wired magazine, for whom Negroponte writes, has probably been a surprise to a great many people, so Knopf's gamble on the title reviewed here is perhaps not as crazy as it seems. Nevertheless, a first printing of 100,000 copies seems ambitious for a book without sensation, romance, pictures, or a flashy design. Are there really so many who care about fiber optics, GUIs, ISDN, and compression technologies? How about those clamoring to read sentences like "Computer networks, on the other hand, are a lattice of heterogeneous processors, any of which can act both as source and sink." To be fair, this is not an especially difficult book to read, and the author defines his terms in the simplest possible language. Nonetheless, Negroponte's long, poorly structured essay about the future of digital technology, though written in a breezy style by a writer as qualified as anyone to offer an opinion on these matters, is never quite gripping. Anyone with some interest in the subject will value the sometimes original and occasionally contrarian ideas, and for many people, one supposes, a peek at the future of digital technology is to some degree intriguing. Still, it seems safe to say that the number of people who read this book from cover to cover will be far fewer than 100,000. Publicity alone may generate some demand, of course, so libraries should be prepared but should not overbuy. (Reviewed January 15, 1995)0679439196Stuart Whitwell

Kirkus Book Review

Negroponte--founder of MIT's groundbreaking Media Lab--offers a brief, rambling survey of the digitization of culture that's not nearly as original as one might expect. His commentary ranges over an impressive array of subjects, from education and entertainment to art, business, and personal planning. Along the way he offers informed observations on such questions as how virtual reality will transform video games, how E- mail will affect your phone bill, how the information superhighway will put video-rental shops out of business, and how semi- intelligent ``butlers'' will help you navigate the ocean of data that will soon be pouring into your home. But this very range of subjects contributes to the book's major flaw: It's scattered and disorganized, more a collection of off-the-cuff ruminations than a useful analysis of any one of these areas (let alone all of them). Some of Negroponte's musings are striking and valuable (how the fax machine has actually hampered the development of digital communication, and how backward thinking has hamstrung high- definition television), but much of the text has a peculiarly stale smell. Do we need another assertion of the Internet's democratizing power or another thumbnail critique of our antiquated and ineffective educational system? The book's uneven tone makes it hard to tell for sure what audience Negroponte's aiming for, veering between oversimplification and clunky jargon. He drops names and introduces various relevant projects, such as the Media Lab's LEGO-Logo education program, but he provides very little description of any of them. Even the Media Lab itself gets only a sketchy paragraph-long portrait toward the very end. Negroponte brings decades of experience to his subject, but it's all for naught; his book is a muddle of retread cyber-hype and familiar predictions, relieved only by occasional flashes of original insight. (First printing of 100,000; Book-of-the-Month Club selection; author tour)