Digerati: Encounters with the Cyber Elite [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

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.

Bottom line - unreadable, empty, and pretentious.