A skeptic by nature, a writer and teacher more at home with ballpoint pens than computer programs, Dinty W. Moore wanted to find out for himself if the much-touted Internet and the electronic culture it has spawned is really going to be the Next Big Thing, or whether it's the emperor's new clothes. This is not a how-to guide, a giddy net-head's online magical mystery tour, or a binaries-in-the-sky futurist treatise. Instead, this book tells it like it is about the Internet. Anyone who's asked, Who's there? What am I missing? and What is it all about? will find Moore's good-natured skepticism a welcome break from the explosion of wide-eyed techno-hype raging all around us. "Moore is far and away the best pure writer of the 'Wired School.' He's like the Stage Manager poking his head in around the set of 'Our Town.' Funny that it took the arrival of this commonsensical outsider to finally put a real human face on the digital world."--San Jose Mercury-News.
Preface: Into the Electronic Woods
Chapter 2. In Search of Useful Uses
Chapter 3. Public Relationships
Chapter 4. My Brain Turns to Mush
Chapter 6. Hanging Over the Electronic Fence
Chapter 8. Spam, Spam, Spam, and Spam
Chapter 9. Why We Pay Our Civil Servants So Much Money
Chapter 10. The Incredible Shrinking Globe
Chapter 11. The Night Thoreau Had Cybersex
Chapter 12. Big Brother and the Bad Boys
Chapter 13. And If Your Head Has Somehow Not Yet Exploded, Let Me Briefly Discuss the Future