Word: dyson
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Under the guiding narrative of Dyson, once called "the most powerful woman in the Net-erati" by the New York Times Magazine, this glossy volume carries the reader through 11 chapters brimming with anecdotal evidence of the author's familiarity with the innermost workings of cyberspace, both as we know it and as Dyson predicts it shall be. Subjects range from the structure of the Net and its usefulness in binding citizens into communities, to the ever-present dilemma of governance and regulation within the electronic realm...
...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...