Andy Reinhardt
INSIDE THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY REVOLUTION by Nicholas Baran, Coriolis Group Books, ISBN 1-883577-10-1, $19.95
DETOUR: THE TRUTH ABOUT THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY by Michael Sullivan-Trainor, IDG Books, ISBN 1-56884-307-0, $22.99
THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY: BEYOND THE INTERNET by Peter Otte, Que, ISBN 1-56529-825-X, $19.99
REALIZING THE INFORMATION FUTURE: THE INTERNET AND BEYOND by National Research Council, National Academy Press, ISBN 0-309-05044-8, $24.95
Given last year's wave of best-selling books about the Internet, it's not surprising that publishers are cranking out even more titles concerning the information superhighway. The four books reviewed here offer varying degrees of insight about this most nebulous of
topics. Unfortunately, they don't provide deep technical information on gnarly subjects, such as how video servers will accommodate 50,000 concurrent requests for the latest Spielberg movie or whether transaction systems will be able to handle 20 million Super Bowl viewers pressing "Buy" on their TV remotes simultaneously. Three of the titles are general-interest books. The fourth,
Realizing the Information Future
, is more of a policy paper.
Of the three general-interest books,
Inside the Information Superhighway Revolution
by Nicholas Baran is the most informative and best written. In lively, readable prose, Baran provides a good overview of the whole topic, including key players, hardware and software, networking, and content. He also tackles some larger questions, such as privacy, cost, and equality of access. Baran does a good job of explaining in lay terms such concepts as analog and digital, bandwidth, and video-on-demand, and he goes deeper into the technology of the informatio
n superhighway than do his counterparts. But even so, expert readers will find the book fairly nontechnical.
For some reason,
Inside the Information Superhighway Revolution
does not say exactly what the information superhighway is, and it would benefit from additional graphics to illustrate the layout and architecture of various proposals. I wasn't crazy about the slightly hokey forward, which appeared to have been tacked on by Baran's editor to illustrate whiz-bang futuristic applications. And I found slightly disingenuous Baran's frequent references to "hype" and "buzzwords" about the information superhighway in a book largely uncritical of its subject. But overall, Baran's book is thoroughly researched and smoothly written.
At the other end of the spectrum is
Detour: The Truth About the Information Superhighway
by Michael Sullivan-Trainor, a senior editor for Computerworld. Though he is enthused about the subject and has done some research, the writing is unfocused and meand
ering.
Detour
is full of information, but it careens from one topic to another and often repeats itself.
Detour's
biggest problem may be its title and cover, which misrepresent and overpromise. The title implies that the book is a hard-hitting debunking of infobahn hype, which it is not, and the cover lines suggest that it contains extensive interviews with assorted luminaries, which it does not.
The Information Superhighway: Beyond the Internet
is by Peter Otte, an editor for Mobile Office. It was obviously written in a hurry. Though it has a nice, colloquial tone, it's so light that it borders on fluff. Otte takes the broadest view of the three authors, which is to say that he touches on everything from the Newton to home theater design, and from PCMCIA to schoolyard violence. At times, the text veers into silliness.
Realizing the Information Future: The Internet and Beyond
is a report authored by a group of distinguished academics and businesspeople
called the NRENaissance Committee, convened by the National Research Council in Washington, D.C. It is dry and academic, but it may be the most informative of the four.
The book outlines in great detail the technical issues of the information superhighway and provides a set of recommendations for an Open Data Network. It's a thoughtful, reasonable, and frankly inspiring prescription that leaves behind partisan politics, marketing glitz, and economic considerations. The information superhighway it sketches would be, if implemented, the most democratic, and it would most successfully avoid technical obsolescence.
Andy Reinhardt was formerly BYTE's West Coast bureau chief.
Word Overload, Information Shortage
