Craig Nova
INTERNET: GETTING STARTED, April Marine et al., PTR Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0-13-289596-X, $28
A DOS USER'S GUIDE TO THE INTERNET, James Gardner, PTR Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0-13-106873-3, $34.95
HANDS-ON INTERNET GUIDE, David Sachs and Henry Stair, PTR Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0-13-056392-7, $29.95
THE INSTANT INTERNET GUIDE, Brent Heslop and David Angell, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-62707-8, $14.95
THE WHOLE INTERNET, Ed Krol, O'Reilly and Associates, ISBN 1-56592-063-5, $24.95
EVERYBODY'S GUIDE TO THE INTERNET, Adam Gaffin, MIT Press, ISBN 0262-57105-6, $14.95
FINDING IT ON THE INTERNET, Paul Gilster, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-03857-1, $19.95
THE INTE
INTERNET: MAILING LISTS, Edward T. L. Hardie and Vivian Neou, eds., PTR Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0-13-289661-3, $29
As far as I'm concerned, there has always been a certain amount of illusion involved in thinking that a guide can solve all your problems. This illusion is great enough with, say, a guide to sex, but when it comes to something really complicated, like the Internet, it is almost complete. As far as the Internet is concerned (and sex, too, I guess), no book is going to compensate for some long, hot, sweaty hours coming to grips with actual experience. However, a good guide, like some of those mentioned below, can certainly give you a few new ideas. There were times during my Internet explorations, I must admit, when this left me contemplating the details of some extremely peculiar embraces.
Also, I'd like to say that it is unfair to compare some of these guides against others. Some are meant
to be concise; others have a larger scale. Sometimes, the sheer bulk of information tends to make one guide more successful than another.
Methodology should be mentioned here, too. I went about trying to evaluate these guides by (1) making a pile of them and (2) getting on-line and trying to figure out how, say, to use gopher. When I ran up against a problem (which was almost instantly), I (3) started going through the pile until I found the answer. You do not have to be a rocket scientist (or a computer programmer) to decide that the guide that gave the most answers with the least amount of looking for them is the superior one. Also, speaking of methodology, simple reference compilations (e.g., The Internet Yellow Pages) are included in a separate category.
The guides are arranged in increasing order of value.
Least useful was Internet: Getting Started. The difficulties here are language, lack of organization, confusion as to whom this guide is for, and lack of vision (which comes, I gue
ss, from the committee of authors/editors). The language here is so bureaucratic as to seem like guidelines for disposing of a particularly rare variety of toxic waste. What information that does exist in the first couple of hundred pages is unconnected to any particular task, and the language in which it is given does not tend to invite curiosity as to the correlatives in a guide to sex.
For instance, there are 205 pages of prose like the following before you learn anything about what you can actually do with the Internet. ``When using an RFC as a reference for a protocol specification, it is important to verify that you have the most recent RFC on that protocol. The RFC titled IAB Official Protocol Standards, currently RFC 13600 (but often updated with a new RFC number under the same title), is the reference for determining the correct RFC to refer to for current specification of each protocol.'' Well, if you don't know how to send E-mail yet, just what are you going to make of that? When Internet: G
etting Started comes to practical information, there is a page and a half, for instance, on WAIS (Wide Area Information Service) and a note to contact Thinking Machines if you want more information. Really.
A DOS User's Guide to the Internet is a step up on the food chain, but not a large one. The difference between it and Internet: Getting Started is the same as that between a spotted newt and a fish egg. Essentially, the guide is limited by giving information only about E-mail, Netnews, and ftp by E-mail and uucp software. Frankly, this is a very slender part of what the Internet can do, and uucp seems awkward to learn for such a small access. There is nothing about WWW (World Wide Web), archie, veronica, or other search utilities. Surely, a DOS user might want to know about some of these.
Hands-On Internet Guide is better. It gets you to do something with the Internet very quickly, and it also has the advantage of being arranged as a series of lessons. However, it does have a fault common to
a lot of Internet books, which is that it seems to imply that the commands it lists here are the ones that are universal, when in fact, depending on your software or how you are hooked up to the Internet, your experience might be entirely different (as mine has been many times). However, Hands-On Internet Guide is particularly good with rules for Usenet, and it is good, too, with telnet and ftp.
The Instant Internet Guide is distinguished by being concise. In fact, it is something like a short guide to DOS commands. If it suffers from anything, it is a lack of scale. But, in many ways, its precision is a strength, and it has a no-nonsense approach that, when you are having a problem, comes in handy. What is here is good, solid information, arranged with an eye toward the practical. Still, it is short, and you will be left with some unanswered questions if you rely on this book alone.
At this point in ranking these books, we are entering a realm where it is a little harder to put one guide ahead
of another. The last four are all competent and useful, and they are written in a clear, easily understandable manner. At this point, judging these competent guides is extremely subjective, because one procedure, correctly described in different guides, will seem more clear in one than another. This, I am afraid, is a matter of tone, or of the authors putting themselves in the shoes of someone who knows nothing and wants to learn fast.
There isn't much one can say against The Whole Internet. It is clearly written. It is precise, and it has a vision of how to use the Internet. This is another way of saying that this book was written by someone for whom the Internet makes perfect sense. This may seem like a small point, but in fact it is a very large one. This vision is what gives this book its authority. Recommended.
Everybody's Guide to the Internet is also good. It has a lively history of the Internet (and having read many of these before looking at this one, I want to point out that this is sa
ying something). Also, the book has a very definite idea of the practical, and it shows up in such details as a section called ``Seven Unix Commands You Can't Live Without.''
It also is unafraid to admit that things will go wrong, as, of course, they do. Many Internet guides take the attitude that if you just follow the easy directions, you can't make a mistake. Well, let me tell you, you can make a lot of mistakes. If you believe a guide that implies otherwise, you have been sold a bill of goods, particularly since, under these circumstances, you will spend a lot of time wondering what is wrong with you, rather than what is wrong with the guide. Finally, this book lists a number of telnet and ftp sites. As such, it gives proof to the saying that god is in the details. Recommended.
Finding It on the Internet is distinguished by its tone, its organization, and its ability to convey, in a friendly and clear manner, how one can go about learning about the Internet. The truth is that a good guide ne
eds, ah, a bedside manner. (``I understand. Sure. Here. Get comfortable.'') This is a long way around of saying that this guide (which confronts the basics: gopher, E-mail, archie, veronica, ftp) has a way of being empathetic with what it is like to be sitting in front of a monitor, sweating bullets, and using the escape character to no effect at all.
The following is a commonsense comment, typical of those that occur throughout Finding It on the Internet, many times in a ``Hint'' section. ``Don't be alarmed if a Gopher search doesn't come off as planned. Network usage may be heavy or a node on the net may fail; if that occurs, Gopher may simply leave you hanging. The best advice in such circumstances is to wait and try again, when usage is less heavy.'' Highly recommended.
My favorite is The Internet Complete Reference. This guide has those things I was looking for right from the beginning: scale (818 pages of solid, down-to-earth information), clarity, and good examples. It admits that things
will go wrong, has a definite idea of just who the audience for this book is, and has a voice you can trust. For instance, one day I downloaded a .tar file. Other guides didn't even have it listed in the index (aside from The Instant Internet Guide, which gets points for it, although the description was a little brief), but The Internet Complete Reference didn't let me down. This was typical of my experience. If you're going to buy only one guide to the Internet, this is it.
Finally, The Internet Yellow Pages and Internet: Mailing Lists are quite useful, if not essential. Of the two, I like The Internet Yellow Pages better, if only because the format is so readable and the book is well organized (in a domain, hierarchy kind of way). It is also one of the few telephone books, or telephone book-like books, I have actually sat down and started reading, saying out loud, ``I'll be damned. I didn't know you could get a list of E-mail addresses for Ukrainian businesses.'' It has other information, too, I mig
ht add, that is closer to home.
Internet: Mailing Lists seems to be a little more high-minded, if not more academic, than The Internet Yellow Pages. One of its difficulties is that it is organized by mailing-list address, most of which make little, if any, sense. Perhaps a listing by subject would be more useful. There is an index, and a good one, although finding information here is a little harder than in The Internet Yellow Pages. Still, it is authoritative, comprehensive, and simply filled with information.
Craig Nova is the author of eight novels and the recipient of many awards and prizes, including an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. You can reach him on the Internet at
sextans@delphi.com
or on BIX c/o ``editors.''
The Joy of the Internet
