Magazine

A Different Voice in the Digital Revolution

Reviewed by Kevin Hunt

With the publication of Rewired, author David Hudson provides much more than just the "brief (and opinionated) Net history" promised in the subtitle. Yes, his is an "opinionated" treatise-- opinionated in the sense that he passionately and persuasively presents a well-reasoned argument for thinking through and involving ourselves in decisions that will influence how cyberspace continues to evolve. And woven into his strong opinions is a refreshing and sharp dose of wit. But at 327 pages, the book is far from brief, and the focus of his "Net history" is the future.

Indeed, the book is thorough and forward-looking: Hudson uses his knowledge and experience of the Net's social, cultural, and technological landscapes to provide a rich and detailed examination of where the Net came from, where it stands now, and what we can do to direct its future -- and ours. And Hudson uses this examination to drive home a crucial point: "People are the killer app," he says. That is, despite the glamour of virtual storefronts and java-enhanced infotainment on the Web, the real attraction of getting online is grounded in the basic human desire to get in touch with others--to communicate with the intent of helping one another get along in the world. And this desire should be at the heart of designing online communication spaces as the Internet and other networks continue to evolve.

In the introduction to his book, Hudson urges us to "get sober" about the prospects and possibilities for the Internet now that both the initial euphoric claims about the Net's potential to democratize communication and the backlash against such claims have subsided a bit:

Neither the hype nor the backlash are any help whatsoever in the face of the challenges to the qualities of the online experience that have brought tens of millions of people to check it out. The most important of these is surely maintaining the Net's unique many-to-many model of communication. In the immediate wake of this overriding concern are issues such as the feasibility of universal access, privacy, censorship, community building, individual and cultural identity, and that's just for starters. (p. 5)

After spending a great deal of time rehashing the commercialization of the Net, and providing an incisive look at the economics and politics driving its development, Hudson devotes the next three sections to building an unrelenting critique of the darkness of such social-Darwinian mantras as extropianism, the "Californian Ideology," and the technolibertarian party line expressed in the pages of Wired magazine. For example, he counters the visions of Wired publisher Louis Rosetto's "voice of the digital revolution."

One of the highlights of the book lies in the fifth section. As a means of focusing his critical lens on Rosetto and Wired, Hudson sheds a great deal of ink detailing the trials and tribulations of Paulina Borsook, a Wired contributor who sharply challenged technolibertarian philosophy. Hudson meticulously details the ensuing controversy, which first arose when Borsook wrote, in Mother Jones's website, such rants as this one (as documented by Hudson):

Just as 19th century timber and cattle and mining robber barons made their fortunes from public resources, so are technolibertarians creaming the profits from public resources--from the orderly society that has resulted from the wise use of regulation and public spending. And they have neither the wisdom nor the manners nor the mindset to give anything that's not electronic back. (p. 198)

While Hudson's critique of Wired and Rosetto is scathing at times, he also is fair in his assessment of Rosetto's mindset. And he even devotes a full chapter to a Rewired interview he had with Rosetto, a free-wheeling romp through a laundry list of issues about exactly who is behind the digital revolution, and for whom it is revolutionary. He even ends the interview with this comment:

Louis, many of the things you've said in the last couple of messages have made me stop dead in my tracks and think. Hard. This is why I value Wired. A friend was telling me the other day that he disagrees with just about everything Wired stands for but hopes to God it never goes away. I'm with him. (p. 259)

One of the most interesting aspects of Hudson's book is that he has chosen to publish his ideas, opinions, and vision of the future as a, well, book. The book is basically a conversation extending from a host of conversations, debates, and communiqués that have occurred in electronic forums of all sorts--websites, e- zines, discussion lists, newsgroups--that the Net has facilitated. (At the end of each of the six sections, Hudson provides a list of references to the various electronic texts that have prompted many of his opinion formations.) Hudson shows that while the Net facilitates great discussions and debates, the printed book still carries a great deal of cultural currency as the most powerful and credible means of synthesizing and promoting a complex and extensive argument (though as an aside, given the clunky typeface the publisher chose to set the text in, readers would have faired just as easily reading the text on a computer screen).

At times Hudson's prose style does get a little heavy, overbearing, and long-winded, a result, no doubt of the speed with which he cranked it out. (If you check through his list of references, you'll find Net sources less than six months old, as of this writing.) Consequently, in his quest to publish a timely and relevant survey of the current digital landscape, he sacrificed a bit of clarity. But in the end, Rewired is an important book, one that provides both a much-needed historical contextualization to the events that are transpiring and a refreshing and far-overdue counterpoint to such treatises as Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital and Bill Gates' The Road Ahead.

Kevin Hunt (huntk@rpi.edu) is the book review editor for CMC Magazine.

Copyright © 1997 by Kevin Hunt. All Rights Reserved.

Advertisement Save time and money-- order this book through:

Click on the title to instantly order this book online: Rewired: A Brief (and Opinionated) Net History by David Hudson (in association with eLine Productions)

Magazine

A Different Voice in the Digital Revolution

Reviewed by Kevin Hunt

With the publication of Rewired, author David Hudson provides much more than just the "brief (and opinionated) Net history" promised in the subtitle. Yes, his is an "opinionated" treatise-- opinionated in the sense that he passionately and persuasively presents a well-reasoned argument for thinking through and involving ourselves in decisions that will influence how cyberspace continues to evolve. And woven into his strong opinions is a refreshing and sharp dose of wit. But at 327 pages, the book is far from brief, and the focus of his "Net history" is the future.

Indeed, the book is thorough and forward-looking: Hudson uses his knowledge and experience of the Net's social, cultural, and technological landscapes to provide a rich and detailed examination of where the Net came from, where it stands now, and what we can do to direct its future -- and ours. And Hudson uses this examination to drive home a crucial point: "People are the killer app," he says. That is, despite the glamour of virtual storefronts and java-enhanced infotainment on the Web, the real attraction of getting online is grounded in the basic human desire to get in touch with others--to communicate with the intent of helping one another get along in the world. And this desire should be at the heart of designing online communication spaces as the Internet and other networks continue to evolve.

In the introduction to his book, Hudson urges us to "get sober" about the prospects and possibilities for the Internet now that both the initial euphoric claims about the Net's potential to democratize communication and the backlash against such claims have subsided a bit:

Neither the hype nor the backlash are any help whatsoever in the face of the challenges to the qualities of the online experience that have brought tens of millions of people to check it out. The most important of these is surely maintaining the Net's unique many-to-many model of communication. In the immediate wake of this overriding concern are issues such as the feasibility of universal access, privacy, censorship, community building, individual and cultural identity, and that's just for starters. (p. 5)

After spending a great deal of time rehashing the commercialization of the Net, and providing an incisive look at the economics and politics driving its development, Hudson devotes the next three sections to building an unrelenting critique of the darkness of such social-Darwinian mantras as extropianism, the "Californian Ideology," and the technolibertarian party line expressed in the pages of Wired magazine. For example, he counters the visions of Wired publisher Louis Rosetto's "voice of the digital revolution."

One of the highlights of the book lies in the fifth section. As a means of focusing his critical lens on Rosetto and Wired, Hudson sheds a great deal of ink detailing the trials and tribulations of Paulina Borsook, a Wired contributor who sharply challenged technolibertarian philosophy. Hudson meticulously details the ensuing controversy, which first arose when Borsook wrote, in Mother Jones's website, such rants as this one (as documented by Hudson):

Just as 19th century timber and cattle and mining robber barons made their fortunes from public resources, so are technolibertarians creaming the profits from public resources--from the orderly society that has resulted from the wise use of regulation and public spending. And they have neither the wisdom nor the manners nor the mindset to give anything that's not electronic back. (p. 198)

While Hudson's critique of Wired and Rosetto is scathing at times, he also is fair in his assessment of Rosetto's mindset. And he even devotes a full chapter to a Rewired interview he had with Rosetto, a free-wheeling romp through a laundry list of issues about exactly who is behind the digital revolution, and for whom it is revolutionary. He even ends the interview with this comment:

Louis, many of the things you've said in the last couple of messages have made me stop dead in my tracks and think. Hard. This is why I value Wired. A friend was telling me the other day that he disagrees with just about everything Wired stands for but hopes to God it never goes away. I'm with him. (p. 259)

One of the most interesting aspects of Hudson's book is that he has chosen to publish his ideas, opinions, and vision of the future as a, well, book. The book is basically a conversation extending from a host of conversations, debates, and communiqués that have occurred in electronic forums of all sorts--websites, e- zines, discussion lists, newsgroups--that the Net has facilitated. (At the end of each of the six sections, Hudson provides a list of references to the various electronic texts that have prompted many of his opinion formations.) Hudson shows that while the Net facilitates great discussions and debates, the printed book still carries a great deal of cultural currency as the most powerful and credible means of synthesizing and promoting a complex and extensive argument (though as an aside, given the clunky typeface the publisher chose to set the text in, readers would have faired just as easily reading the text on a computer screen).

At times Hudson's prose style does get a little heavy, overbearing, and long-winded, a result, no doubt of the speed with which he cranked it out. (If you check through his list of references, you'll find Net sources less than six months old, as of this writing.) Consequently, in his quest to publish a timely and relevant survey of the current digital landscape, he sacrificed a bit of clarity. But in the end, Rewired is an important book, one that provides both a much-needed historical contextualization to the events that are transpiring and a refreshing and far-overdue counterpoint to such treatises as Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital and Bill Gates' The Road Ahead.

Kevin Hunt (huntk@rpi.edu) is the book review editor for CMC Magazine.

Copyright © 1997 by Kevin Hunt. All Rights Reserved.

Advertisement Save time and money-- order this book through:

Click on the title to instantly order this book online: Rewired: A Brief (and Opinionated) Net History by David Hudson (in association with eLine Productions)

Magazine

A Different Voice in the Digital Revolution

Reviewed by Kevin Hunt

With the publication of Rewired, author David Hudson provides much more than just the "brief (and opinionated) Net history" promised in the subtitle. Yes, his is an "opinionated" treatise-- opinionated in the sense that he passionately and persuasively presents a well-reasoned argument for thinking through and involving ourselves in decisions that will influence how cyberspace continues to evolve. And woven into his strong opinions is a refreshing and sharp dose of wit. But at 327 pages, the book is far from brief, and the focus of his "Net history" is the future.

Indeed, the book is thorough and forward-looking: Hudson uses his knowledge and experience of the Net's social, cultural, and technological landscapes to provide a rich and detailed examination of where the Net came from, where it stands now, and what we can do to direct its future -- and ours. And Hudson uses this examination to drive home a crucial point: "People are the killer app," he says. That is, despite the glamour of virtual storefronts and java-enhanced infotainment on the Web, the real attraction of getting online is grounded in the basic human desire to get in touch with others--to communicate with the intent of helping one another get along in the world. And this desire should be at the heart of designing online communication spaces as the Internet and other networks continue to evolve.

In the introduction to his book, Hudson urges us to "get sober" about the prospects and possibilities for the Internet now that both the initial euphoric claims about the Net's potential to democratize communication and the backlash against such claims have subsided a bit:

Neither the hype nor the backlash are any help whatsoever in the face of the challenges to the qualities of the online experience that have brought tens of millions of people to check it out. The most important of these is surely maintaining the Net's unique many-to-many model of communication. In the immediate wake of this overriding concern are issues such as the feasibility of universal access, privacy, censorship, community building, individual and cultural identity, and that's just for starters. (p. 5)

After spending a great deal of time rehashing the commercialization of the Net, and providing an incisive look at the economics and politics driving its development, Hudson devotes the next three sections to building an unrelenting critique of the darkness of such social-Darwinian mantras as extropianism, the "Californian Ideology," and the technolibertarian party line expressed in the pages of Wired magazine. For example, he counters the visions of Wired publisher Louis Rosetto's "voice of the digital revolution."

One of the highlights of the book lies in the fifth section. As a means of focusing his critical lens on Rosetto and Wired, Hudson sheds a great deal of ink detailing the trials and tribulations of Paulina Borsook, a Wired contributor who sharply challenged technolibertarian philosophy. Hudson meticulously details the ensuing controversy, which first arose when Borsook wrote, in Mother Jones's website, such rants as this one (as documented by Hudson):

Just as 19th century timber and cattle and mining robber barons made their fortunes from public resources, so are technolibertarians creaming the profits from public resources--from the orderly society that has resulted from the wise use of regulation and public spending. And they have neither the wisdom nor the manners nor the mindset to give anything that's not electronic back. (p. 198)

While Hudson's critique of Wired and Rosetto is scathing at times, he also is fair in his assessment of Rosetto's mindset. And he even devotes a full chapter to a Rewired interview he had with Rosetto, a free-wheeling romp through a laundry list of issues about exactly who is behind the digital revolution, and for whom it is revolutionary. He even ends the interview with this comment:

Louis, many of the things you've said in the last couple of messages have made me stop dead in my tracks and think. Hard. This is why I value Wired. A friend was telling me the other day that he disagrees with just about everything Wired stands for but hopes to God it never goes away. I'm with him. (p. 259)

One of the most interesting aspects of Hudson's book is that he has chosen to publish his ideas, opinions, and vision of the future as a, well, book. The book is basically a conversation extending from a host of conversations, debates, and communiqués that have occurred in electronic forums of all sorts--websites, e- zines, discussion lists, newsgroups--that the Net has facilitated. (At the end of each of the six sections, Hudson provides a list of references to the various electronic texts that have prompted many of his opinion formations.) Hudson shows that while the Net facilitates great discussions and debates, the printed book still carries a great deal of cultural currency as the most powerful and credible means of synthesizing and promoting a complex and extensive argument (though as an aside, given the clunky typeface the publisher chose to set the text in, readers would have faired just as easily reading the text on a computer screen).

At times Hudson's prose style does get a little heavy, overbearing, and long-winded, a result, no doubt of the speed with which he cranked it out. (If you check through his list of references, you'll find Net sources less than six months old, as of this writing.) Consequently, in his quest to publish a timely and relevant survey of the current digital landscape, he sacrificed a bit of clarity. But in the end, Rewired is an important book, one that provides both a much-needed historical contextualization to the events that are transpiring and a refreshing and far-overdue counterpoint to such treatises as Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital and Bill Gates' The Road Ahead.

Kevin Hunt (huntk@rpi.edu) is the book review editor for CMC Magazine.

Copyright © 1997 by Kevin Hunt. All Rights Reserved.

Advertisement Save time and money-- order this book through:

Click on the title to instantly order this book online: Rewired: A Brief (and Opinionated) Net History by David Hudson (in association with eLine Productions)

Magazine

A Different Voice in the Digital Revolution

Reviewed by Kevin Hunt

With the publication of Rewired, author David Hudson provides much more than just the "brief (and opinionated) Net history" promised in the subtitle. Yes, his is an "opinionated" treatise-- opinionated in the sense that he passionately and persuasively presents a well-reasoned argument for thinking through and involving ourselves in decisions that will influence how cyberspace continues to evolve. And woven into his strong opinions is a refreshing and sharp dose of wit. But at 327 pages, the book is far from brief, and the focus of his "Net history" is the future.

Indeed, the book is thorough and forward-looking: Hudson uses his knowledge and experience of the Net's social, cultural, and technological landscapes to provide a rich and detailed examination of where the Net came from, where it stands now, and what we can do to direct its future -- and ours. And Hudson uses this examination to drive home a crucial point: "People are the killer app," he says. That is, despite the glamour of virtual storefronts and java-enhanced infotainment on the Web, the real attraction of getting online is grounded in the basic human desire to get in touch with others--to communicate with the intent of helping one another get along in the world. And this desire should be at the heart of designing online communication spaces as the Internet and other networks continue to evolve.

In the introduction to his book, Hudson urges us to "get sober" about the prospects and possibilities for the Internet now that both the initial euphoric claims about the Net's potential to democratize communication and the backlash against such claims have subsided a bit:

Neither the hype nor the backlash are any help whatsoever in the face of the challenges to the qualities of the online experience that have brought tens of millions of people to check it out. The most important of these is surely maintaining the Net's unique many-to-many model of communication. In the immediate wake of this overriding concern are issues such as the feasibility of universal access, privacy, censorship, community building, individual and cultural identity, and that's just for starters. (p. 5)

After spending a great deal of time rehashing the commercialization of the Net, and providing an incisive look at the economics and politics driving its development, Hudson devotes the next three sections to building an unrelenting critique of the darkness of such social-Darwinian mantras as extropianism, the "Californian Ideology," and the technolibertarian party line expressed in the pages of Wired magazine. For example, he counters the visions of Wired publisher Louis Rosetto's "voice of the digital revolution."

One of the highlights of the book lies in the fifth section. As a means of focusing his critical lens on Rosetto and Wired, Hudson sheds a great deal of ink detailing the trials and tribulations of Paulina Borsook, a Wired contributor who sharply challenged technolibertarian philosophy. Hudson meticulously details the ensuing controversy, which first arose when Borsook wrote, in Mother Jones's website, such rants as this one (as documented by Hudson):

Just as 19th century timber and cattle and mining robber barons made their fortunes from public resources, so are technolibertarians creaming the profits from public resources--from the orderly society that has resulted from the wise use of regulation and public spending. And they have neither the wisdom nor the manners nor the mindset to give anything that's not electronic back. (p. 198)

While Hudson's critique of Wired and Rosetto is scathing at times, he also is fair in his assessment of Rosetto's mindset. And he even devotes a full chapter to a Rewired interview he had with Rosetto, a free-wheeling romp through a laundry list of issues about exactly who is behind the digital revolution, and for whom it is revolutionary. He even ends the interview with this comment:

Louis, many of the things you've said in the last couple of messages have made me stop dead in my tracks and think. Hard. This is why I value Wired. A friend was telling me the other day that he disagrees with just about everything Wired stands for but hopes to God it never goes away. I'm with him. (p. 259)

One of the most interesting aspects of Hudson's book is that he has chosen to publish his ideas, opinions, and vision of the future as a, well, book. The book is basically a conversation extending from a host of conversations, debates, and communiqués that have occurred in electronic forums of all sorts--websites, e- zines, discussion lists, newsgroups--that the Net has facilitated. (At the end of each of the six sections, Hudson provides a list of references to the various electronic texts that have prompted many of his opinion formations.) Hudson shows that while the Net facilitates great discussions and debates, the printed book still carries a great deal of cultural currency as the most powerful and credible means of synthesizing and promoting a complex and extensive argument (though as an aside, given the clunky typeface the publisher chose to set the text in, readers would have faired just as easily reading the text on a computer screen).

At times Hudson's prose style does get a little heavy, overbearing, and long-winded, a result, no doubt of the speed with which he cranked it out. (If you check through his list of references, you'll find Net sources less than six months old, as of this writing.) Consequently, in his quest to publish a timely and relevant survey of the current digital landscape, he sacrificed a bit of clarity. But in the end, Rewired is an important book, one that provides both a much-needed historical contextualization to the events that are transpiring and a refreshing and far-overdue counterpoint to such treatises as Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital and Bill Gates' The Road Ahead.

Kevin Hunt (huntk@rpi.edu) is the book review editor for CMC Magazine.

Copyright © 1997 by Kevin Hunt. All Rights Reserved.

Advertisement Save time and money-- order this book through:

Click on the title to instantly order this book online: Rewired: A Brief (and Opinionated) Net History by David Hudson (in association with eLine Productions)