---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 12 Jul 1994 12:48:47 MDT From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Global Networks" ed. Harasim BKGLBLNT.RVW 940330 The MIT Press 55 Hayward Street Cambridge, MA 02142-1399 Robert V. Prior, Editor - Computer Science prior@mitvma.mit.edu Maureen Curtin, Int'l Promo. - curtin@mit.edu "Global Networks", Harasim, 1993, 0-262-08222-5, U$29.95 linda_harasim@sfu.ca A few days before I got this book, I noted a news story which talked about the slow growth of the Internet in Japan. A local pundit was explaining that the Internet culture and mindset was inappropriate in Japan, leaving the impression that the American mindset was different. Well, not to worry, Japan. The Americans, by and large, don't understand the Internet any better than you do. This was also interesting in view of the article in the book by a Japanese author. At one point he states that email is unsuitable for the Japanese, because Japanese communication relies so much on context. (Whose doesn't?) In the very next paragraph, he states that email is most suitable for Japanese because email addressees can't interrupt the sender. The preface doesn't give a clear picture of the purpose of the book. The book is interdisciplinary in nature and written by "experts in their fields", but the nature of those fields is remarkably hard to pin down. Chapter one is really an extension of the preface, and does give us a description of four parts to the book, but, aside from "Applications" (more properly very limited case studies), any article could be said to fit the designations of "From Technology to Community", "Issues in Globalizing Networks", or "Visions for the Future". I read the articles in the book with a growing sense of disbelief. It seemed to be an almost deliberate parody on the uselessness of academic research. Papers without premises, conclusions that don't conclude, and articles by people all of whom presumably have Internet access, but almost none of whom seemed to have used it to explore a wider world. The preface states this is a multi-disciplinary study: it seems to be a remarkably undisciplined one. (I must excuse certain parties from this indictment. Quarterman is as cogent as ever; Kapor and Weitzner, while prosletizing for the IPN, at least know whereof they speak. Jacobson does, as well, and while his piece has a decided "new age" flavour, it contains about the only passion in the book.) One possible indicator of the lack of network familiarity is the continual use of analogies to other forms of "community". Computer communications is a new medium, and a new type of community. The articles are therefore bolstered by literature surveys and ten-year-old studies. The only recent experiment cited is the Global Authoring Network, which can't be said to be an overwhelming success: it produced this book. Or perhaps it was the participants. Two note (citing a prior study of some sort) that email is not suitable for collaborative work. Having spent seven years in one particular collaborative research project, I have some trouble with a statement like that. (The design of the collaboration over the Global Authoring Network may also be at fault here. Network activity is much more suitable to concurrent, multi-threaded tasks and discussions than the arbitrary, sequential activity described in the book.) The range of topics covered is broad. The representations of specialty and culture by the various authors is likewise impressive and potentially useful. The papers, however, all seem to be the work of network neophytes, or, if they have some experience, it is with a single specialty system or topic. About half the articles must bring us the surprising news that on the net, no one knows your height or skin colour. All of this stuff would have been interesting--fifteen years ago. This book has a possible place as a text for a course in computer mediated communications, preferably as a springboard to further research or a discussion starter. I would have trouble recommending it even to a newcomer to the online world. I may be judging it too harshly out of a sense of deep personal disappointment. I have an abiding interest in the social, as opposed to purely technical, aspects of the net. I have been looking for a book of this type for a long time. I wish it had been done better.