Deeper: Adventures on the Net

<p><P>With a winning combination of bemusement, frustration, and affection, John Seabrook takes us along on his personal journey from newbie to old hand in cyberspace. Along the way, he sheds light on the history of the Internet and how it evolved from a geeky hobby into an important part of mainstream popular culture, and in engaging, often hilarious descriptions he de mystifies this new, ever-expanding world. For anyone thinking about getting on-line, for computer hacks interested in comparing notes, and even for nodrivers on the information highway, <i>Deeper</i> is a one-of-a-kind guidebook, at once informative, evocative, and beautifully written.<br></p> <h3>Publishers Weekly</h3> <p>Cyberspace is trendy, but is it trendy enough to attract readers to a superficial if lightly amusing report like this one? Beginning with mundane electronic encounters with Bill Gates, Seabrook, a New Yorker staff writer, launches his Powerbook on an exploration of the Internet. He explores e-mail and receives a message from his mom: If you don't come to Thaksgiving [sic] my heart will be broken. He investigates virtual communities, Usenet groups, flames, cybersex, the Web and other aspects of the online experience. Along the way, he evinces a smooth writing style and lively wit, but scarcely a whit of profundity. His discussion of point-and-click thinking, for example, reveals the obvious: that the Web is not a linear medium, that surfing it via a mouse is more mindful than watching MTV. Deeper, or at least fresher, ideas-e.g., that surfing the hyperlinked Web may induce paradigmatic addictive behavior and a light trance; that pointing and clicking compresses the everyday experience of space-time by substituting instantaneity for process-generally elude Seabrook. More a slick magazine article full of stale notions and blown up to book size than a book proper, this volume fails utterly to rival the important writings about cyberspace word-processed by Nicholas Negroponte, Donna Haraway, John Perry Barlow, Howard Rheingold and others. Shallower would be its proper title. (Feb.)</p>