Word: dyson
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...personal vision and a design for living in a highly computerized and networked age, Release 2.0 is brimming with autobiographical details of the author's ascent in a largely male-dominated world of venture capitalists and upstart corporate analysts. Such reminiscing remains appropriate in the first chapter, where Dyson speaks of "How [she] got the story and learned to love markets." Her attempts to find a vocational niche in Moscow and her participation on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties organization, require less of the conversational tone used in discussing her childhood dinners with Nobel...
Most strikingly prophetic are the second, third and fourth chapters of Dyson's book. Detailing the impact of digital networks upon communities, work and education, these three chapters present the reader with an unfailing air of optimism for the development and integration of the Internet within public and private domains. Dyson views the Net as a means of linking individuals and allowing citizens to seek employment and students to expand their horizons, though she does concede that certain risks--breaches of privacy, increased insulation from reality--will always exist. Neither is one of her visions the total dehumanization of interactions...
Beyond the pseudo-Utopian predictions of far-reaching Internet usage lie the technical specifications of Dyson's treatise. A Harvard graduate with a degree in economics who subsequently worked as a reporter for Forbes magazine and followed high-tech stocks as a securities analyst on Wall Street, Dyson possesses an impressive amount of practical experience with which to substantiate her conceptions. One of the most innovative suggestions she makes concerns the mass mailings of junk e-mail sent through the Net. Her plan to curb this "spamming" involves the use of "sender-pays" e-mail, wherein the recipient would...
Those who read Release 2.0 with the expectation of learning about Dyson's dealings with other prominent figures of the cyberspace Beltway will find satisfaction in the anecdote preceding Chapter 6 which concerns the nature of intellectual property on the Internet. Though the event detailed bears little apparent relation to a concept as abstract as intellectual possession, the specifics of Dyson's meeting with Bill Gates, Vice-President Al Gore '69, and 99 high-level CEOs at Gates's own home--including a captivating description of a glassblower hired as entertainment for the occasion--eventually lead to the topic...
...control, anonymity and security form the foundations of the latter half of Release 2.0. With these four issues constantly weighing on the minds of Internet users and overseers, one is not surprised to find that these four chapters hold the most measured, fact-filled arguments of the entire book. Dyson includes the names of regulatory agencies already active in private households and, to a lesser extent, in the public arena. Names like CYBERsitter, Net Shepherd, and TRUSTe provide evidence of the viability of the Internet as a secure environment for children and adults alike. Unfortunately, the main bias of Release...