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Intelligence analysts refer to three categories of information sources: the "white" world of open source literature, the "black" world of classified information, and the "gray" world of conference literature and other hard-to-find documents. Researchers with access to the gray literature, especially in a rapidly evolving area like the Internet, can derive a tremendous advantage over their peers by making immediate use of results which won't appear in trade or academic journals for months.
While Mark Stefik's Internet Dreams: Archetypes, Myths, and Metaphors doesn't offer breaking news about the Internet, it does present a solid and varied selection of material from technical reports, books, magazine and journal articles, conference presentations, and original essays which would be difficult for the average reader to assemble independently.
As intimated by the title, Internet Dreams looks at the Internet in terms of four metaphors:
Stefik offers his own thoughts before and after each piece, often turning to the Jungian concepts of myth and archetype mentioned in the book's subtitle. Digital libraries, for example, evoke the archetype of the "keeper of knowledge," while digital worlds bring out the "adventurer," someone constantly searching for new experiences. The editor's comments are useful as segues between pieces and, happily, relate the element in question to themes brought out elsewhere in the book. His thoughts, combined with an intelligent progression of essays within each section, add to the considerable value of the information presented.
I was somewhat disappointed by the presence of a number of spelling errors (substituting "m" for "in", a common optical character reader problem which should have been caught), inconsistent spellings (Neil Stephenson's novel Snow Crash is written both with and without a space between the words -- the space is correct) and at least one improperly substituted word (in his comments after Pavel Curtis' article on "Mudding" Stefik refers to William Gibson's Neuromancer as Necromancer). While these errors were not nearly as pervasive as they were in the first hardcover printing of Sex, Laws, & Cyberspace (from a different publisher, I hasten to add), they were still distracting.
Fortunately the meat of the book more than makes up for these oversights. As might be expected from MIT Press, Internet Dreams would work well on the reading list of a class discussing the public policy aspects of computer networks. The book's overall theme and modular design make it a solid choice for academic settings and for the reader who would like to delve into the "gray" literature and read the original expression of ideas which have profoundly impacted how we think about computers and their associated networks.
-- Curtis Frye (cfrye@teleport.com)
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Explanation of ERCB rating scale: No stars = unacceptable, 1 Star = marginal, 2 Stars = average, 3 Stars = above average, 4 Stars = exceptional.