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Silicon Snake Oil Second Thoughts on the Information Highway by Clifford Stoll. New York: Doubleday, 1995, 247 pp.
Step right up, folks. It's the answer to all problems everywhere. That's right. It's the information highway, and it will make everyone smart, successful, and happy. Step right up, folks.
There seems to be no end to the hype and hyperbole surrounding the information highway, also know as the Internet. "But the medium is being oversold, our expectations have become bloated, and there's damned little critical discussion of the implications of an online world," writes Clifford Stoll in Silicon Snake Oil. A critical discussion is exactly what Stoll provides in this witty and wise counterpoint to the ubiquitous hawking of the Internet.
Cliff Stoll is also the author of The Cuckoo's Egg, a bestselling account of how he tracked and caught a German spy ring operating over the Internet. He is an astronomer, a computer security expert, and among the originators of the earliest computer networks. He knows (and loves) his subject, but he offers a word of caution. "It'd...