In the book Being Digital, Nicholas Negroponte discusses the meaning of the digital world he sees developing as a consequence of the current and future computer revolution. The spread of the personal computer changed the way people work first and then started bringing changes in other aspects of existence, and the degree and meaning of this change is only now being assessed. Negroponte says he wants to explain the changes that have come about, those that are coming, and to give the reader a chance to understand how he or she will meld with the computer in the near future. The central theme is that the digital world is truly a revolution in communication and that it will be empowering, enabling people to communicate more clearly, directly, and purposefully than they have been able to do in the era of the printed word. The basic theme is that being digital will mean a different way of interacting with nearly every aspect of life.
The most important aspect of the computer for Negroponte is communication by means of the modem, whether through telephone wires or a wireless technology connecting the personal computer and the user to a world of information, to other computers and other users, to the telephone, to the television, and to other electronic devices. The author makes it clear that there are many such devices which cannot even be imagined as yet, but the underlying fact is that digital communication will be part of our future communications to the point where many current forms of communication are likely to die. Negroponte sees multimedia communication as more versatile, more direct, and more informative than the written word. He also sees the computer as being capable of making decisions and gathering and selecting data that will tell us what we want to know without our having to wade through the mass of information available to get to the part we need.
The digital world exists in the computer and on the computer ...