The question is, how will you interact with earrings and toasters that are digital? This book is not primarily about the future, although by Chapter 13 the reader is taken beyond the information age, and by Chapter 15, being digital is not enough. It's more about what's happening right now.

This book made me laugh, and it made me cry. Not sad or sorry crying; I'm a big guy, you know. I mean the kind of emotion that you feel when you read something that you recognize as intensely personal to you, in the sense of "I knew that!" or "Right On!" or "Holy Mantra," or whatever else you say when you find the truth, or some significant bits of information.

You might want to read this book because of the emotional thrills that I have described, but more important, this book explains what's happening, because of computers, and what is likely to happen as a result. This book is not about computing; it's about living in a digital world. The author explains the difference between bits and hard stuff, right off, so you will know what he is talking about, and even though the author is a college professor, this is not a technical book. You are bound to find it both entertaining, and filled with more than one personal "Wow!" or LOL (laugh out loud).

This book has some heavy stuff, too. Negroponte claims that "the medium is no longer the message." He predicts that in the near future, "Your telephone won't ring indiscriminately; it will receive, sort and perhaps respond to your incoming calls like a well-trained English butler [...] Schools will [be] more like museums and playgrounds for children to assemble ideas and socialize with other children all over the world."

This book is not about the Net, per se, but the author points out that the 1995 rate of growth of Net users was ten percent for the year, which means that if this rate continues, in six or seven years there will be more Net users than there are men, women, and children on this planet!

Being Digital is about much, much more, although "Less is More" is quoted early on in the book. The book is about being digital in all of our ways; not even television escapes Negroponte's scalding review. His research indicates that people don't complain about the picture resolution on their TVs; mostly they complain about the content, and the fact that although there are over 100 channels available, there usually isn't anything that you, personally, want to watch. This little tale about TV exposes some of the politics involved in choosing international standards for technology, and what "saving face" really means.

The book covers several additional topics of interest, such as:

A Place Without Space—You know where that is!

Fiber, Nature's Way—We're talking 'phone cables here.

The Bit Police—and the delay in the development of Digital Audio Tape (DAT).

Iconographics—an explanation of the "Palaces of the Mind" concept used in ancient Greece.

Multimedia—developed by the Israeli commandos in 1976. You didn't know that?

APPENDIX

Nicholas Negroponte, the author of Being Digital, is a professor of Media Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is also Founding Director of the Media Lab at MIT, where research continues into the application and effects of digital technology on humans.

After you have read Being Digital, you may wish to comment directly to the author, at nicholas@media.mit.edu.

Or, you can visit the author's home page .

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