Subtitle: The Hidden Complexities of the Internet
Author: Thomas Valovic
Subject: Science and Society/Technology
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-2754-6
Pages: 240 pp.
Description: An expert exploration of the Internet and its impact on our culture

Surf the web. Ride the information highway. Log on to the future. Corporate ad campaigns like these have become pervasive in the 1990s. You're either online, or you're falling behind the times-at least, that's what the media tells us.

Ever since the 1990s, when the Internet gained widespread popularity, it has been heralded as one of the best things ever to happen to technology and communications. Commentators expected it to revolutionize how we communicate, do business, and educate our children. Conversely, other pundits have vehemently attacked this technology. Naysayers of "cyberlife" emerged with their warnings of how the Net provides an uncensored, round-the-clock venue for pornography, for inaccurate, simplified information, and is rife with opportunities to violate our right to privacy. In Digital Mythologies, Thomas Valovic hopes to raise the level of discussion by giving a full and balanced picture of how the Net affects our lives.

Digital Mythologies, a collection of Valovic's essays, asks hard questions about where computer and communications technology is taking us. Through anecdotes drawn from his experiences as former editor-in-chief of Telecommunications magazine, the author gives readers an insider's peek behind the scenes of the Internet industry. He explores the underlying social and political implications of the Internet and its associated technologies, based on his contention that the cyberspace experience is far more complex than is commonly assumed. Valovic explores these hidden complexities, and points to fascinating connections between the Internet and our contemporary culture.

"In general, the media seemed to have gotten caught up in the Internet craze, almost in a pop culture sense, and became prone to endlessly repeating a single idea: that the new technologies were going to profoundly change our lives in the realms of business, education, health care, and just about any other realm of human activity that could be thought of.

While this was true enough on the surface of things, it also became apparent after a little analysis that these breathlessly delivered renditions were usually devoid of any real specifics. . . . I wanted to find the answers to some very basic questions: Where were the specifics of these transformations? How do we get past all the marketing hype and the constantly invoked mythologies of digital process and into something more tangible, more grounded in day-to-day reality? If we suspect that something great or interesting or unusual is occurring in a historical sense, then why should we stop short from making a case for their human use and application in terms of benefits derived? After all, if we don't know what these changes will really amount to, how can we possibly say that we think they are important or exciting or wonderful?"----Thomas Valovic, from the Preface to Digital Mythologies: The Hidden Complexities of the Internet

THOMAS VALOVIC is a research manager with International Data Corporation and a past editor-in-chief of Telecommunications magazine.

Topics explored include:

*The Internet's role in developing a new economic paradigm

*The notion of "quality of information"

*The complexities of role and identity in cyberspace

*The myth of electronic democracy