According to Paul Levinson, it would be improper to portray information technology as the cause of change in our world. However, Levinson clarifies that its role in enabling change can hardly be overestimated. He also points out--through riveting examples--that inventions have unintended consequences and uses. Why is it, for example, that the move from polytheism to monotheism failed when attempted by the pharaoh Ikhnaton, yet took solid root among the Hebrews who were taken out of Egypt by Moses only about 150 years later? Levinson argues that communication technology played a key role: The awkward Egyptian hieroglyphics failed to carry the ideology as well as the Hebrew alphabetic system. From there, Levinson examines the early social changes that became possible because of what the author calls "the first digital medium"--the alphabet. He considers how the Reformation, economic and political movements, and the scientific revolution were largely enabled by the printing press. He then discusses the influence of photographic communications and electronic technology such as the telegraph, the telephone, and broadcasting.
Levinson devotes the second half of the book to our present digital revolution, from word processing to the Internet and beyond. One of his key points is that new technology doesn't necessarily displace the old so much as it expands it. Therefore, he doesn't see any end to using paper anytime soon. However, he sees great need for changes in the way we view creative rights. He proposes what he calls an"electronic watermark" for intellectual property--a universal patent number that will be embedded in intellectual property and will notify users in any medium of the property's creators. Levinson puts forth his ideas in a manner that is both formal and engaging. He has a knack for making his reader feel intelligent and respected--and never more so than when he looks at issues of ethics and a speculative future.
Readers interested in history, technology, politics, or the limitations of cyberspace may now all clamber aboard for a grand tour of communications media and their effect on our personal and social lives. Levinson, president of Connected Education and a frequent contributor to Wired and the Village Voice, deftly guides us on a cogent review of everything from the alphabet and its impact on monotheistic religion to the printing press and its shaping of Columbus's voyage to the New World, concluding with (what else?) a crackerjack essay about cyberspace and "the feel of knowledge." Smart, spare, yet deep, and heartily recommended.?Geoff Rotunno, Tri-Mix Magazine, Goleta, Cal.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"Remarkable in scholarly sweep and rhetorical lyricism - what first promises to be the digital Origin of Species turns out to be sequel to The Odyssey: media progress presented as an epic journey towards freedom, unseating censors." --Wired
"a book that is both full of insights and provocative" --The Financial Times
"defies the critics of technology" --Analog
"a valuable text for the growing army of media studies students" --New Scientist
"Those who dread freedom should strive to suppress the critical theories that weave through this text." --Marvin Minsky, MIT
From Kirkus Reviews
The ``soft edge'' of the title refers to the intangibles surrounding technology's impact on society. The second half of this overview of the development of information techonology gets mired down in elaborating on this definition, to the study's detriment. The ``natural history'' offered by Levinson, an educator and writer (New School for Social Research) takes the study of information from the dawn of written language to word processing, showing, for instance, how radio, which would presumably be replaced by television, survived by finding its niche with rock 'n' roll--something TV could never offer on the same scale. The implications that Levinson derives from the first part of his study, stressing the ways in which new media have always had a profound impact on human society, are often thought-provoking though sometimes unconvincing. For instance, Levinson ties the success of monotheism to the Israelites, who had an alphabet, as opposed to earlier monotheistic Egyptians, who had hieroglyphics and, thus, lower literacy rates. However, the assertion that the ancient Egyptians ever were monotheistic is only a theory, and is not substantial enough to build yet other theories on, which Levinson repeatedly attempts to do. Further pitfalls await the author as he attempts to attack the World Wide Web and artificial intelligence. His arguments increasingly ignore the larger impact of new information technology on contemporary society altogether, instead addressing such seemingly unrelated topics as copyright law, author compensation, and online education. Levinson's sprawling investigation and proliferating theories lessen the strength of his clever final chapter, which uses instant coffee as an ingenious metaphor for information--you can describe it, he says, and it is an efficient way to transport a product, but if you can't taste it, what good is it? Levinson should have excised the chapters that don't tie in with his central theme. As it stands, The Soft Edge is too soft, and without taste. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Paul Levinson, PhD, is Professor of Communication & Media Studies at Fordham University in NYC. His nonfiction books, including The Soft Edge (1997), Digital McLuhan (1999), Realspace (2003), Cellphone (2004), and New New Media (2009; 2nd edition, 2012), have been translated into ten languages. His science fiction novels include The Silk Code (winner of Locus Award for Best First Science Fiction Novel of 1999, author's cut ebook 2012), Borrowed Tides (2001), The Consciousness Plague (2002), The Pixel Eye (2003), The Plot To Save Socrates (2006, 2012), and Unburning Alexandria (2013) - the last two of which are historical as well as science fiction. He appears on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and numerous TV and radio programs. His 1972 LP, Twice Upon a Rhyme, was re-issued in 2010. He reviews television in his InfiniteRegress.tv blog and Starpulse, and was listed in The Chronicle of Higher Education's "Top 10 Academic Twitterers" in 2009.
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