Being Digital

"Nicholas Negroponte wrote this book all the way back in 1995, right at the outset of the Internet revolution. What is so fascinating about it is that he explains in layman’s terms why it is that digital information will result in a communications revolution. It was an amazingly prescient book. I think for anybody wanting to understand the power of digital information this book is a must read. He said the world would never be the same again. He wrote this from the perspective of being the founder of the MIT Media Lab, already well-known for its pioneering work, funded by all sorts of companies. It had literally hundreds of researchers and staff, so Nicholas Negroponte was very well-placed indeed to make observations about how the digital world would change communications. For example, in Being Digital , he says there will come a time when people will stop reading books in paper form, they will be reading books on a screen. That is quite remarkable – this was 1995. Now it has actually happened. In the US, the Kindle outsells hardbacks, so for book readers it has made a huge, huge difference. If, like me, you travel a lot and it’s difficult to pack lots of books and there are weight restrictions, of course you want to have an electronic book reader. It enables you to take far more books than you were previously able to do. He also made the observation that there would be touch screen interfaces, which we have now become terribly used to. He is one of the leading tech visionaries and I think this is the book that set out almost an agenda for the digital revolution."