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By Esther Dyson
Broadway Books, $25
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Review by Mark Luce
When checking e-mail, nothing so maddens and disappoints as the seemingly random messages entitled "Make BIG $$$ Stuffing Envelopes." In Internet parlance, these entrepreneurial missives are derisively deemed "spam," wired culture's equivalent of junk mail.
Now imagine a way to halt these pesky pleas, a way in which you could tell the sender, "Sure I will read your pitch, but only if you pay me a buck." Esther Dyson, in her new book "Release 2.0: A Design for Living in the Digital Age," says such advances will happen, and much sooner than you think.
A noted Internet expert whose company EDventure publishes the respected newsletter "Release 1.0" and hosts a series of plugged-in conferences, Dyson here presents a blueprint for better lives through cyberspace. Think positive. Think a Web-based Martha Stewart.
Dyson won't, though, teach you how to craft touching Christmas cards out of the detritus of cyberlife, but she will show you a relatively easy way to transform the Web from a murky, amorphous land of confusion and conspiracy into (as she borrows from Hemingway) a clean, well-lit place of self-policing communities. Here groups band together to generate more social interaction, thus prompting in-depth discussions that fold into self-policing guidelines. The end result, as Dyson sees it, is a more friendly, more up-to-date, safer and, of course, a more profitable Web.
With deft touches of humor ("Step 1: Go to Menlo Park. Find a tree. Step 2: Shake the tree. A venture capitalist will fall out.") and a healthy mistrust of government tinkering with cyberspace, Dyson explains both the basics and complexities of Web life, tackling prickly issues -- privacy, security, governance and intellectual property -- with an optimistic pragmatism.
Although occasionally too self-referential -- Dyson lets us know some of the companies she invests in, tells of her many consulting gigs and plugs her company's conventions -- "Release 2.0" provides an excellent overview of the growing pangs faced by an industry that has literally exploded in less than five years. In addition, she lays out a type of individual-based action plan to get people not only to understand their Internet environment, but also how to use the Web to forge a better society.
Dyson's approach is strictly libertarian. She possesses an inherent trust that the market will iron out the myriad wrinkles in Internetlife -- whether ratings for Web sites, interstate and international commerce or the hot topic of encryption. Dyson argues for a decentralized governance of the Net, one in which the citizenry, rather than the government, design fluid rules and norms of behavior. It's much better, she says, to have a flexible situation that "fosters freedom with certain trade-offs" than to have Big Brother snooping around, making rules and scoping out your supposedly private e-mails.
Dyson admits her refrains -- grass-roots organization, individual choice, moral and market-based decision making -- are idealistic. And well, frankly, they are a bit halcyon. In her final chapter Dyson implores individuals to start creating, to play an active role in improving their entire lives by being part of an online world that "foster(s) involvement, disclosure, clarity, honesty, respect for yourself and others."
That bubbly optimism can appear simplistic, but ultimately, Dyson's heart and mind are in the right place: using the Internet as a tool for learning and commerce while increasing individual and consumer rights.
"Release 2.0" is a formidable book, one that is not designed so much to answer all the questions, but rather to make people think about the greater implications of an ever-growing wired society. Dyson's conversational prose never falters into techno-speak and her intimate knowledge of the Internet gives powerful information for both cyber-newbies and seasoned Web-surfers.
Mark Luce is a freelance writer in Lawrence, Kansas.
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