Cruising the Information Highway

If all this talk about the Information Highway has made you realize there are areas of your communications or multimedia knowledge that seem not quite up-to-date with all the jargon being flung about, help is available. We recently received a terrific little book from Oracle called The Commuter's Guide to the Information Highway. In about 30 clever pages (in full color) it offers you definitions, illuminating visuals, and lots of information (with very little marketing).

We'd suggest that you call or Fax Oracle and request your own copy (we refuse to lend you ours, since we're busy memorizing all those new words).

A cautionary note: because Oracle is in the business of selling technology, they tend to wax enthusiastic about what will happen and when. We'd point out that good questions might be when will this happen in a wide-spread way? When will this be readily available at a reasonable price? When will suppliers make an economic return on this technology, guaranteeing their ongoing commitment to a continuing investment?

In fact, that is one of the problems about the Information Highway, in general, and not an Oracle-specific problem at all. In a giant burst of enthusiasm about what will be, we've forgotten to ask some of the sensible questions we need to know the answers to, and yet we're depending on some of the Information Highway technologies as if we knew those answers. So we see articles about companies that are making plans to use the Internet as the basis for various business ventures, even though it's theoretically not permitted to use the Internet that way at all. We're adding users to the Internet at a nearly exponential rate -- and changing the kinds of services we're pushing along it to include much hungrier ones like voice and graphical interfaces and video -- without nearly enough people paying specific and official attention to how to expand the Internet -- and how and who will pay for that.

Since the first time I used the Internet was in the late 70's -- about the time I started being an unsuccessful (too early) EMail missionary -- and want to keep on using it, I think we should spend a lot less time worrying about whether movies should run on cable TV or media servers and a lot more time on building a commercial Internet service. I know my priorities (and I already can access more movies than I have time to watch, anyway).

We also need to not be so self-absorbed that we think that we're the world. On-line users are a significant group, but a minority of the world -- 10 or 15 million users on the public services. All the EMail users (private and public, world-wide) still make up a group of less than 50,000,000 people. We can influence what others do and what the future will look like, but much of the world will continue to exist without benefit of digital soup for some very long time, however much we might think they would be better off if they took our advice and waded in.

So we need a broad view, a realistic sense of time, and a lot of patience, paired with much energy and persistence as we slither down yet another digital trail and find yet one more wonderful and previously unknown part of Information Space. Welcome to Cyberia -- the name of another wonderful book we'll be telling you about soon.

With the thought in mind that you'd like some help in learning more about the Internet, here (in no particular order) is what we currently have on the shelf:

Title	Author	Publisher	Comments
The Internet Directory	Braun, Eric	Fawcett Columbine	Big Fat Directory of Listings for until we get that on-line index
How the Internet Works	Eddings, Joshua	Ziff-Davis Press	A highly visual (and nicely done) guide to what it is, how it works, and how to do it. My personal favorite
The Internet YellowPages	Hahn, Harley & Stout, Rick	Osborne McGraw-Hill	More than yellow pages -- some topical info in each category
Internet Primer	Lane, E.& Summerilll, C.	Meckler	The best overview of the technology itself. Quite readable; good reference to have on hand
Internet Companion	LaQuey, Tracy	Addison-Wesley	Handbook and guide with an inspirational foreword by the V.P.
Netguide	Wolff, Michael	Random House	Combination handbook and map/index. Similar in some ways (but zippier) to the Internet Yellow Pages

You might also like the Internet Guide for Dummies from McGraw-Hill's very successful Dummies series. Coming out this month; we're waiting for our review copy now. Look also for the glitzy Planet Internet (brand new) and the various Internet-in-a-box sets in both book stores and computer stores (software, documentation and directories, designed to get you up and running, with a few hours of free time to try things out).

If you've reached this page, obviously you like to read and buy books. For your convenience, we have established a link that will allow you to order this book from Amazon.com. You should be aware that we receive a small commission for this service, but that our goal is to make it easy for you to purchase the books we review.

If you are interested in ordering:
The Internet Directory (original), click here
The Internet Directory v.2.0(new version), click here
How the Internet Works, click here
The Internet YellowPages, click here
Internet Primer, click here
Internet Companion, click here
Netguide, click here
Internet for Dummies (1997 ed.), click here
Planet Internet, click here
Internet-in-a-Box (hard to find), click here