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Being Digital (Click to select text)
BEING DIGITAL is a book written by Nicholas Negroponte, a Professor or media technology at MIT.'Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc; New York and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Ltd; Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in slightly different form by Alfred a. Knopf,inc;New York in 1995. Being Digital is about what life will be like in the not too distant future, life in a world in which the bit has replaced the atom as the primary commodity in all our human interactions: in how we entertain ourselves, educate our children, conduct our bu sinesses, and express ourselves. Wide ranging and anecdotal, the book is a compilation of ideas that Negroponte originally explored in his monthly column for Wired magazaine. But the book is not a mere anthology. Fortunately for us, when compiling these columns, Negroponte deemed it impo rtant to re-examine and -as he says-'repurpose' many of his original ideas in light of what has changed in the short time since he originally wrote many of the Wired pieces. The result is a read that is often insightful, often madenning, and always provoc ative. In the first part he talks about the communication medium, and how information content is so much more important than bandwidth. If we would only transmit better-labelled bits, we could do so much more with the bandwidth we have today. More elaborately, on 'Bits are Bits' here, he reflects on the difference between bits and atoms: how the shift to an economy based on the transfer o f bits is affecting the structure of the information industry; how the transmission of bits is regulated; and how the major players- the telecommunications industry, cable operators, and electronics and computer companies- are reacting to the digital revo lution (and, in most cases, how they are focussing their efforts on misguided projects). Along the way Negroponte offers his ideas on how the information infrastructure should be shaped, where the players should be (re)directing their efforts, and what al l this will mean for you and me, as both information consumers and creators. One of his more intriguing ideas in this section is his view that 'the medium is no longer the message':information providers will transmit bits of information that are, essentia lly, formless. The bits, in turn, will be assembled by us-the receivers-according to how we want to interact with them. As a result, we will exert more control over both the content of information that we want entering our homes and the form in which we w ish to see it presented to us. He moves to the interface, and how we need better communication between people and machines. The machine need to know us in order to act intelligently for us (he uses the metaphor of a 'butler'); in particular, they need sensors to know when we are commun icating with them.
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