Being Digital
Being DigitalBEING DIGITAL is a book written by Nicholas Negroponte, a Professor or media
technology at MIT.'Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division
of Random House, Inc; New York and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of
Canada Ltd; Toronto.
Originally published in hardcover in slightly different form by Alfred a.
Knopf,inc;New York in 1995.
Being Digital is about what life will be like in the not too distant future,
life in a world in which the bit has replaced the atom as the primary commodity
in all our human interactions: in how we entertain ourselves, educate our
children, conduct our bu
sinesses, and express ourselves.
Wide ranging and anecdotal, the book is a compilation of ideas that Negroponte
originally explored in his monthly column for Wired magazaine. But the book is
not a mere anthology. Fortunately for us, when compiling these columns,
Negroponte deemed it impo
rtant to re-examine and -as he says-'repurpose' many of his original ideas in
light of what has changed in the short time since he originally wrote many of
the Wired pieces. The result is a read that is often insightful, often
madenning, and always provoc
ative. In the first part he talks about the communication medium, and how
information content is so much more important than bandwidth.
If we would only transmit better-labelled bits, we could do so much more with
the bandwidth we have today. More elaborately, on 'Bits are Bits' here, he
reflects on the difference between bits and atoms: how the shift to an economy
based on the transfer o
f bits is affecting the structure of the information industry; how the
transmission of bits is regulated; and how the major players- the
telecommunications industry, cable operators, and electronics and computer
companies- are reacting to the digital revo
lution (and, in most cases, how they are focussing their efforts on misguided
projects). Along the way Negroponte offers his ideas on how the information
infrastructure should be shaped, where the players should be (re)directing their
efforts, and what al
l this will mean for you and me, as both information consumers and creators. One
of his more intriguing ideas in this section is his view that 'the medium is no
longer the message':information providers will transmit bits of information that
are, essentia
lly, formless. The bits, in turn, will be assembled by us-the
receivers-according to how we want to interact with them. As a result, we will
exert more control over both the content of information that we want entering
our homes and the form in which we w
ish to see it presented to us.
He moves to the interface, and how we need better communication between people
and machines. The machine need to know us in order to act intelligently for us
(he uses the metaphor of a 'butler'); in particular, they need sensors to know
when we are commun icating with them.