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Review by Alden Mudge
In his provocative book, "Rewired," David Hudson energetically reminds us that the Net isn't just bells and whistles, gadgetry and gigabytes, code and killer apps. The Net is also a set of contending behaviors and ideas -- a culture perhaps -- that merits some lingering, thoughtful attention. One of the delights of Hudson's particular form of attention is the witty exposure of some very bad ideas.
A section entitled "Utopia and its Discontents," for example, unravels the jargon and charts the development of several widely promoted theories of how the Net will change human life and society. A theory called Extroprianism, Hudson tells us, posits a day when our consciousness can be downloaded to a silicon chip so that we will live on after the passing of our bodies. What about sex?, Hudson wonders, and goes on to discuss Paulina Borsook's argument "that death is a defining characteristic of what it is to be human." About another Net-related theory, expressed most recently by Mark Dery, "that we're all neurons in an emergent global meta-mind," Hudson confesses that he's tried to follow the logic of this notion, "but I keep running into that old Error 404, common sense."
Indeed, "Rewired" brings a bracing splash of common sense to the overheated, overhyped boosterism that characterizes most writing about the Net. That's fairly easy to do when contending with the wacky utopianism cited above. But Hudson also devotes considerable wit and analysis to more far elusive ideas about the Net. An artist himself, he examines the freighted potential for multimedia art. He also casts a skeptical eye on the business models most corporations currently use for developing a Net presence and makes what may be his most important single point, "that the very crux of this whole online thing is about person-to-person communication via the Net's inherent many-to-many model." The real attraction of the Web "isn't always more information," he declares. "Access to each other is just as vital, if not more so."
It is probably this concern for sustaining access that leads Hudson to devote much of the book to a careful investigation of the politics of technolibertarianism, an ideology promoted by "Wired" magazine and its publisher, Louis Rossetto. Hudson seems on solid ground in pointing out that this ideology is the most pervasive and least analyzed theory held in common by a wide range of citizens on the Net. His discussion is subtle and his opinions about "Wired" and its founder are complex, but his warning is clear and important -- this ideology is dangerous, if only because it is so widely accepted and so largely unexamined.
In the end, Hudson's arguments are far from the neo-ludditism of a Cliff Stoll (whose recent book, Hudson writes, "is full of the rabid disdain a former smoker has for other smokers"). In fact, "Rewired" began as a Web site, and a skeptical examination of Net life and thought continues there to this day. Readers who are concerned about "this set of technologies and its impact on our lives" would do well to take a careful look.
Alden Mudge can be reached at alden_mudge@bookpage.com.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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