Customer Reviews

Digerati: Encounters With the Cyber Elite

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Scanning through the list of interviewees alone should guarantee that you don't buy this book to find out more about how the Net came to be. None of the people here built the Net. There's no interview with Tim Berners-Lee, no Marc Andreesen, no Bob Metcalfe, no bob Taylor, no Vince Cerf.The people who wrote the tools that made CMC possible aren't here, their thoughts (what was TBL thinking when he decided the WWW would be a "good idea") aren't represented here. What you have are a series of interviews with commentators for the most part.

Keeping Brockman's media background in mind, this isn't surprising, you'd expect to find publishers, authors, journalists in here, and they do make for interesting reading, some of them even know what they're talking about. But one sorely misses the actual creators of the Net. The guys who write MOOs, forged SMTP and IRC, who created the medium we operate in. The book comes off as another case of intellectual masturbation. Brockman feels it's necessary to turn around every two sentences and wax pathetic on the glory of art and artists. All of this gets really annoying after a while. You want to tell him to shut up and get on with it. Then there's his really obnoxious attempt to create allegory. I'm sure Chaucer and Tolkien are turning in their graves with the idiotic titles Brockman feels compelled to bestow on each of his interviewees. The book is really wierd in that the center of attention oscillates between Brockman's relationship with these people, the people themselves, and their ideas about cyberspace. None of it comes off as being particularly polished. I wish Brockman had cut out his own little comments and name-dropping (his introductions read like long reminiscences by a New York intellectual of gatherings where "ideas flew around the table" a phrase he comes dangerously close to using. He actually feels he's part of a new Algonquin, well Brockman you just don't have the wit for it, and you got to be a lot harsher and sharper if you expect to survive with Ms. Parker). Then there's the equally annoying collection of foot-notes after each essay, a two/three line comment from other people in the book talking about the current interviewee. The only thing those are good for is highlighting just how unimaginative Bill Gates really is.

The interviews themselves are not bad (except ftror the industry types who find it necessary to talk about their own company's "strategies", whether this be AOL, Sun or MS it becomes tiring), some of them are even quite entertaining, with some very interesting concepts being introduced by some of the people. I gave the book a 6 because some of the people interviewed had really interesting perspectives on CMC, and I may not have encountered them since I can't read so many full-length books on this topic. So the collection of esssays idea itself was good, I just wish Brockman would have kept himself, and his touchy-feely emotions for these people out of it. he's not a society writer, and can't handle that genre. He might want to work on keeping his "I'm a New York intellectual and I look really stupid flaunting it, but I don't know I'm doing that" persona out of the way too. On the whole, it was mostly a botched up editing job, and too much of the director coming into camera focus (even Hitchcock knew he could only make one appearance). I'm not saying the artist should pervade the work, or even that it's possible for the artist to _not_ seep into the work. There are ways to do that which come off very elegantly. The book is still maybe worth reading if you want a quick intro some of the thoughts these people have.

I happened to check the book out from the library, so I am happy to say I did not waste any money on it. Some books are readable and interesting. Other books may be readable and boring. Unfortunately this book is unreadable, owing to an idiotic typography that acts as a constant visual hiccup, so the issue of interest or boredom is barely relevant. From the few pages I did go through before giving up in disgust -- and with a headache -- I can only say that rarely have I read someone so ignorant of culture, so poor in intellect, and having so much pretensions to a high brow culture. Maybe Brockman thinks that it brushes off on him just by rubbing shoulders with some more or less "famous" people. In his case it clearly does not.

Bottom line - unreadable, empty, and pretentious.

I think that the best way to look at John Brockman and his books about his buddies ( I think that another reviewer here was right on the money when he refered to Brockman and his edge.org cronies as a 'mutual admiration society') I've thought the same things ever since I started reading his works and his website... Don't get me wrong, these are very smart people...just not as singularly brilliant as Brockman seems to think they are...the best thing you could do, if you want to really plumb the depths of thought that these people offer, is to google or search this site for other works by them: "Digerati" only gives you the most shallow view of what they are about.

At a time when when an adherance to ideological dogma seems to be giving way to the "real politic" of a maturing marketplace, John Brockman's latest book offers insights into the philosophies and Zeigeist of these changes which are above all cultural events. Digerati offers an intellectual context of the changes that are affecting us today, and will increasing affect us as technologies move from the rarefied domains of the digital magi to those of the soccer mom. It is from the people of accomplishment that we profit and learn, and Brockman offers us here such an array, digital litterati singing themes at times discordant, but always fascinating and compelling

Before you read this book, you have to understand a Wired style of presenting article. With its smartly-ironic thinking in composing futuristic English sentence, another book by Hardwired simply touch the heart of Cyber Mania. Digerati, which in this case means, literari for the digital age, presented in such a way, that make us feel like reading in the internet medium. The interview was written and matrixed with other opinions from the Cyber Elite. Just read the chapter about the sceptic Cliff Stoll and the pro and contra of other geeks like Bill Gates, Steve Case and others regarding Stollinian theory. Then you might want to buy this book. It is simply the best book on Cyber Culture.

~I was truely hoping this book was going to give some compliments most of the book goes on about how revolutionary things should be while almost all (bar one or two) seem to think the whole world and Internet consists of purely American citizens and that American rights should be used on the Internet and therefore applied to the rest of the world, followed by dribbling on about context and content in such boring terms it was difficult to stay awake.

The book also consists of more than a few journalists and analysts whom, after all, had~ such great ideas and visions would be sitting at the top of a large company and not speculating about whats going on.

If this is the best ideas and visions the

Yes, I just like the book title and the new word "digerati".