Being Digital [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Dieser Titel ist in englischer Sprache.
Gründer des legendären Media Lab am Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT), Wired-Kolumnist (dessen deutsche Übersetzungen übrigens in K@nrad erscheinen), Vordenker einer vernetzten Welt: Nicholas Negroponte hat eine große Schar treuer Anhänger. Being Digital (im Deutschen Total Digital) ist eine überarbeitete Version von 18 Kolumnen, die Negroponte für Wired über dieses Thema geschrieben hat.

Großteils sind diese Texte eine Geschichte der Medientechnolgie, nicht eine der üblichen euphorischen Vorhersagen oder Ksssandrarufe kommender Technologien. Am Anfang beschreibt er die Entwicklung der CD-ROM, von Multimedia, Hypermedia, HDTV (High Definition Television) und mehr. Besonders interessant ist der ganze Bereich über Benutzeroberflächen -- Negroponte gibt einen umfassenden Überblick über die Bereiche Grafik, VR (Virtual Reality), Hologramme, Tele-Conferencing, Spracherkennung und andere Eingabemöglichkeiten.

Erst im letzten Kapitel und im Epilog gibt Negroponte einen Ausblick darauf, was "Digitales Sein" für unsere Zukunft heißt. Er preist den Computer wegen seiner pädagogischen Möglichkeiten, erkennt aber auch Gefahren des technischen Fortschritts, beispielsweise den zunehmenden Software- und Datendiebstahl. Auch die Veränderungen, denen der Arbeitsmarkt unterworfen ist, betrachtet er mit gemischten Gefühlen. Total Digital gibt einen aufschlußreichen Einblick in die Geschichte des Siegeszugs der neuen Technologien und Medien, und Negroponte trifft einige interessante Voraussagen für die Zukunft. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Taschenbuch .

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. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

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.

The success of Wired magazine, for whom Negroponte writes, has probably been a surprise to a great many people, so Knopf's gamble on the title reviewed here is perhaps not as crazy as it seems. Nevertheless, a first printing of 100,000 copies seems ambitious for a book without sensation, romance, pictures, or a flashy design. Are there really so many who care about fiber optics, GUIs, ISDN, and compression technologies? How about those clamoring to read sentences like "Computer networks, on the other hand, are a lattice of heterogeneous processors, any of which can act both as source and sink." To be fair, this is not an especially difficult book to read, and the author defines his terms in the simplest possible language. Nonetheless, Negroponte's long, poorly structured essay about the future of digital technology, though written in a breezy style by a writer as qualified as anyone to offer an opinion on these matters, is never quite gripping. Anyone with some interest in the subject will value the sometimes original and occasionally contrarian ideas, and for many people, one supposes, a peek at the future of digital technology is to some degree intriguing. Still, it seems safe to say that the number of people who read this book from cover to cover will be far fewer than 100,000. Publicity alone may generate some demand, of course, so libraries should be prepared but should not overbuy. Stuart Whitwell

Negroponte, popular columnist for Wired magazine and founding director for the MIT Media Lab, describes how advancements in computer technology and telecommunications will transform workplaces, households, and educational institutions. He explains how this revolution will change the way we live, think, and interact with one another and with technology and foresees some mind-boggling challenges that lie ahead in developing truly global systems for delivering multimedia and other forms of digitally based information. Negroponte characterizes the development of future information delivery systems as a battle between atoms, the components of books and other physical resources, and bits, the basic building blocks of information. In 1991, he predicted the eventual demise of libraries, those vast storehouses of atoms, in favor of bit-based purveyors of information. An important work for public and academic libraries.
--Joe Accardi, Northeastern Illinois Univ. Lib., Chicago
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"The finest, most understandable explanation of the digital revolution to date....Being Digital is a visionary work, written by one of this planet's masters of media."--The Christian Science Monitor

"Being Digital flows from the pen (or cursor) of a wizard who is himself helping to create the new cosmos into which we are hurtling....To read Being Digital is to enter the future it describes."--The New York Times Book Review


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Accessible book about how to survive the encroaching digital age, outlining some of the progresses in science which will bizarrely affect our daily living. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.