To Infinity and Beyond: A Cultural History of the Infinite by Eli Maor (review)

of increasingly integrated networks. The Internet, which is actually a vast network containing some 38,000 smaller networks in 135 countries, is currently the world's most extensive online system, supporting e-mail, information databases, and various other subscription and free services for close to 20 million regular users. Professors Lee Sproull and Sara Kiesler discuss ways in which global networks can provide businesses and organizations with competitive advantages. A growing number of companies in developed nations are using computer systems and local area networks for organizing internal operations and communications with customers and for data communications such as electronic funds transfers. Training workers to use in-house e-mail has also become commonplace. Workers can hold conferences and tap into scores of databases and services. Managers can also use networks to foster new kinds of task structures and reporting relationships. Although never replacing face-to-face interactions, networks hold great potential for improving performance in areas such as customer service, product design or production. The introduction of these new communication technologies ultimately may have a cultural impact as profound as the impacts that printed books, telephones and television have had. Students , researchers and scholars are among the groups who stand to benefit most from online access to various forms of information such as libraries, databases and bulletin board services. Lucio Teles explores some of the new knowledge resources for students, including network-based apprenticing with mentors, peers and experts. Techniques using coaching, feedback and greater instructor and peer access are employed to build and share knowledge in subjects such as Science, English , History and Geography. Two popular types of commercial online services are bulletin board and conferencing systems, or "virtual communities ," as author and editor Howard Rheingold describes them. His prime example is the thriving WELL system, which hosts a wide spectrum of discussion topics. Rheingold emphasizes the responsibility of individuals for their community input and the necessity of ensuring freedom of expression in "cyberspace." He points out that "democracy itself depends on the relatively free flow of communications" and asks, 360 Reviews "who safeguards the privacy of individuals in the face of technologies that make it possible to amass and retrieve detailed information about every member of a large population?" On examination, the issues of control and online privacy are seen as central to the future health of global networks and are tied to public policy legislation and jurisdictional frameworks. Several of the authors address aspects of these critical, yet underexamined questions. Jurist Michael Kirby and professor Catherine Murray note that, as new forms of information property are produced online, we are put at risk by "the frequent incapacity of democratic policy processes ... to keep pace with the social implications of technology." They discuss the need for the development of international legal privacy guidelines based on those of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. Lotus Development Corporation founder and software designer Mitchell Kapor and attorney Daniel Weitzner maintain that to ensure that global networks achieve their potential , "standards must be developed that enable these diverse nets to interconnect and interoperate seamlessly from the users ' perspective." They put forth their vision of an International Public Network, which would serve as an interconnected confederation of numerous diverse worldwide networks with the common goal of striking a "balance between diversity and homogeneity, global access, and local character." They also argue that the networks should be modelled on the phone system's common carrier structure to ensure free and open expression. It remains to be seen what effect the introduction of major transnational telephone, cable, entertainment, and news-gathering companies will have on the future of telecommunications infrastructures and data networks. Will they, as Howard Frederick predicts, continue the current trend towards "monopolization of global information and communication ?" On the issue of user control of networks , Anne Wells Branscomb says CMCs are shifting from groups "divided by national telecommunications entities to ones governed by a multiplicity of user groups who wish to promulgate their own rules of conduct." The "do-ityourself ' spirit of self-organizing individual user groups is a key part of the charm of networks. It is clear that these experts prefer a medium that retains its human-family...