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Nicholas Negroponte and Being Digital

Nicholas Negroponte, in Being Digital, has written a fascinating and delightful analysis of the world of modern technology, particularly communications technology. The book can be read and enjoyed by the technocrat, the lay user of computers, and even those who have no use for high-tech communications but are nevertheless open to an adventure in ideas and cultural analysis.

At the same time, as this review will argue, there is a degree of naivete to the book which gives the computer revolution a rosy glow and overlooks or minimizes the potentially negative consequences of that revolution. This failure on the part of the author has created a book which is primarily a cheerleading exercise, if a fascinating and often brilliant one, for the digital revolution.

Negroponte's book may certainly be appreciated by the technophobe, but the author also makes quite clear that it will be increasingly difficult for any person in a modern society to remain outside the sphere of computers and the like. Increasingly, he writes, the flow of almost every form of information is based not on atoms (as the atoms of books, for example) but on bits, the stuff of digitalized machines: "The change from atoms to bits is irrevocable and unstoppable" (4). If the transition from atoms to bits is indeed as inevitable as it seems, then we are most fortunate to have a writer and expert like Negroponte to explain the transition in a way which both clarifies our confusion and eases our fears.

However, if there is a problem or a weakness with the book, it is found in that same hard-charging indefatigable optimism. There are profound social, cultural, economic and political changes which accompany every major revolution in technology, especially communications technology. Negroponte's unbridled optimism for everything related to computers, the Internet, CD-ROMs, etc., is the expected attitude of an advocate, but it prevents him from taking seriously the ne...

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Nicholas Negroponte and Being Digital. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 21:33, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1708080.html