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The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media (Leonardo Books)

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The title of this collection gives a clue of what the reader is headed for - the term "dialectic" is most often connected with philosophical ponderings or Marxist manifestos - this is not just another puff piece exhorting the brave new world and global village of interconnectiveness, this is a series of eleven well written essays delving into New Media Theory.

Grouped into four sections: "The Real and the Ideal", "The Body and the Machine", "The Medium and the Message", and "The World and the Screen", this collection explores the new way of being and thinking that digital technology elicits. An important work that refuses to slip into pedanticism; thought provoking and entertaining. A must read for anyone who wants to be a subject rather than an object in the Information Age.

Books about any medium written when the medium is new, tend to promise the moon with that medium, sing paeans, make doomsday predictions, believe that utopia is just round the corner. In one manner or other the urge to be the prophet overtakes the urge to be an analyst. This also plagues many books about comptuers and internet.

This anthology does not break free from prophesy-mania completely, but many of the contributors like Michael Heim, Katherine Hayles, et al., are far wiser.

This book delights the reader by beautifully exploring the meaning of hypertext, meaning of being in a digital world, human reactions to technology etc., without falling back to commonplace platitudes.

This makes the book stand-out from the deluge of books in the 1990s which sung paeans to virtual communities, borderless worlds, MUDs, MOOs, cyborgs, end of money, end of copyright, death of distance and other 'social science fiction' fantasies.

~That does not means it is correct. – I know, I know, by using~{!0~}correct~{!1~}, it shows I'm not dialectically sophisticated enough. However, that is my point: those material force you to think, and force you to justify your logic/thinking as an everyday techie. For example, the ~{!0~}information~{!1~} view of genetics. It is totally justifiable ("justfiable", another sin like "correct"): information is used because the DNA code is perfectly comparable with computer code.~~ However, why computer code is ~{!0~}information~{!1~}? – because it is ~{!0~}form~{!1~} related. Why ~{!0~}form~{!1~}? because it is related with the application of math. In general, the prestige or bias for ~{!0~}information~{!1~} is from the mathematic-based exact science.

The premises or hidden background of ~{!0~}dialectics~{!1~} is somewhat cynical sociological-philosophical interpretation of concepts. I believe it is an antidote for techies – even it simply means you have~~ to put some thinking on it.

I love it, because it force me to prove it is incorrect!~