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Being Digital
by Nicholas Negroponte
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Vintage (1996-01-03)
ISBN: 0679762906
EAN: 9780679762904
Dewy Decimal #: 303.4833
Paperback: 272 pages
Edition: 1
Release Date: 1996-01-03
SKU: 122203
Condition: Very Good
Comments: 0679762906 Book free of markings. Cover shows light to moderate shelf wear. Interior & spine evidence little to no use. Overall, a very serviceable copy. Your book will be carefully protected for transit in sturdy, weather-resistant packaging. We are prompt, efficient, communicative.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
In lively, mordantly witty prose, Negroponte decodes the mysteries--and debunks the hype--surrounding bandwidth, multimedia, virtual reality, and the Internet, and explains why such touted innovations as the fax and the CD-ROM are likely to go the way of the BetaMax. "Succinct and readable. . . . If you suffer from digital anxiety . . . here is a book that lays it all out for you."--Newsday.
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Amazon.com Review
As the founder of MIT's Media Lab and a popular columnist for Wired, Nicholas Negroponte has amassed a following of dedicated readers. Negroponte's fans will want to get a copy of Being Digital, which is an edited version of the 18 articles he wrote for Wired about "being digital." Negroponte's text is mostly a history of media technology rather than a set of predictions for future technologies. In the beginning, he describes the evolution of CD-ROMs, multimedia, hypermedia, HDTV (high-definition television), and more. The section on interfaces is informative, offering an up-to-date history on visual interfaces, graphics, virtual reality (VR), holograms, teleconferencing hardware, the mouse and touch-sensitive interfaces, and speech recognition. In the last chapter and the epilogue, Negroponte offers visionary insight on what "being digital" means for our future. Negroponte praises computers for their educational value but recognizes certain dangers of technological advances, such as increased software and data piracy and huge shifts in our job market that will require workers to transfer their skills to the digital medium. Overall, Being Digital provides an informative history of the rise of technology and some interesting predictions for its future.
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Customer Reviews
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Good bread, but nothing in between
Rating  (3)
Date: 2006-04-26
4 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
I read this book, partly based on the implied challenge of one of my professors. After finishing it, I can only say I'm glad I didn't pay full price for it.
For starters, you can't blame Negroponte for the dated material in the book. After all, it was published in 1995. One of the things I really enjoyed about this book was reading some of the predictions made by Negroponte back then, and how they turned out. The "atoms vs. bits" argument was arguably revolutionary at the time and I think it is a relevant method of discussing the digital revolution with students who were born either during or shortly before the book being published. Dinosaurs such as I can remember the days before the internet and when we had to use typewriters to work on papers. I remember how completely freaked out I was the first time I heard my computer "speak" in 1994, after installing a sound card and CD ROM drive - so the concept of interactive computing and hence moving bits vs. moving atoms is a bit of an eye-opener to an old timer. To those who come of age post-Internet, its a good way of grounding you in the history and function of digital life. The best arguments in the book show up in the introduction and in the conclusion - I think that's where Negroponte is at his best. He pontificates (as well as predicts!) very well in these sections - much better than in the rest of the book.
Between the intro and conclusion... well... there seems to be a lot of rambling. Kind of reminds me of a guy at work who won't stop talking once he starts. And then its scattershot from one topic to another, blah de blah de blah, with no real substance. The best part between the opening and closing is when Negroponte goes off about the stupidity of fax technology. Quite frankly I agree - why type something on a computer, print it out, put it in another machine, send it electronically to wherever, so that someone at the other end can print out another copy? Complete waste of paper, to say the least. Makes me wonder if the lumber/timber industry isn't involved somehow... but other than that, there just isn't much there.
That said, this isn't really a bad book. At times I found myself nodding in agreement, other times nodding off to sleep, and other times laughing out loud either at the foolishness of some predictions or the uncanny accuracy of others. Overall however, I wasn't too terribly impressed.
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Being Digital in Digital Planet
Rating  (5)
Date: 2005-09-24
5 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
IMAGINE that in a bright morning you read a digital newspaper which was specially "printed" for you. Supported by a telepresence tool, your digital form can be present at some places at the same time -- without getting effort at all from your house. Mostly of your job will take over by smart-digital-interface tools. You are living in digital life.
I read this book for the first time in 1996, when I was in Tokyo, Japan. Negroponte, to some extend, can be said as the Father of Digital Revolution. He reveals the mistery of multimedia, virtual reality, band-width and Internet.
Nearly 10 years later, now, I still enjoy to read this book. This is a fascinating book. Indeed, this is a must read book for those who want to know how digital tools can change our life in our new planet: digital planet.
Please find what method exactly offered by Negroponte to be "digital people"?
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Negroponte agrees...
Rating  (4)
Date: 2005-09-06
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
"And so? I know: Extrapolating bandwidth, processor speed, network dimensions, or the shrinking size of electromechanical devices has become truly tiresome. Moore's Law, first expounded by Gordon Moore in 1965, is indeed a stroke of brilliance, but one more mention of it should make you puke. Terabit access, petahertz processors, planetary networks, and disk drives on the heads of pins will be ... they'll just be. Face it - the Digital Revolution is over." -- Nicholas Negroponte, 12/98
Maybe this will silence some of the recent critics who've been tearing into this book. Yes, this stuff was actually INTERESTING at one point, but we've heard too much about it at this point. I own the book, and enjoy re-reading it occasionally (*very* occasionally) when I have nothing better to do, just to get some perspective on how things looked in 1995. Seems like a century ago, does it not? Things change so fast in the digital age that books like this are doomed to obscurity 6 months after they're published. But in my opinion perspective on the past can be priceless, because knowing where we've been helps us figure out where to go next.
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Being Byte-able
Rating (4)
Date: 2005-04-12
3 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
I read this book in 1996 because I saw it on my manager's desk - we both have EE/MBAs and decades of computing experience - and we discussed some of the issues raised.
This all happened in 1996, of course.
I found it a very good book. I'm sure that it made forecasting errors, but also certain that compared to many of the other books which delved into similar terrtory, it was superior (as a book for the general reader.)
I also must point out that for software developers with decades of experience in 1996 - this includes Bill Gates - the web took most of us by surprise. However, once nrought to my attention by a younger CSer, I could easily realize the power of it.
About a year ago I began reading books on computing and other subjects from an earlier era - the 70s to mid 90s - like "The Soul of a New Machine" and "Future Shock" and "Hackers" among many others. Many of these were excellent books, partly because they got the technology and because they also got the sense of what it was like to be on the cutting edge of technology, however, most are now historical artifacts.
Negroponte got the sense of what was happening in certain subsets of digital technology and essentially sounded the warning to those unaware.
As always, context is critical.
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diary of an egomaniac
Rating  (1)
Date: 2004-09-18
5 out of 20 customers found this reveiw helpful
Negroponte is the man who created Wired Magazine and then had them put his face on the cover and give him made-up awards. It is hard to point to any important discovery coming from him or the MIT Media Lab, except perhaps the invention of hype.
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