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T A B L E+T A L K

Is Martin Amis a brilliant stylist, a vile misogynist, or both? Discuss in the Books section of Table Talk.

W A N D E R L U S T

Esther Dyson, Road Warrior
By Don George
The Net's most frequent flyer shares her travel secrets
(11/04/97)

R E C E N T L Y

Speaking Truth to Power
By Anita Hill
Nonfiction
(11/03/97)

Blues up and Down
By Tom Piazza
Nonfiction
(10/31/97)

BLUE: The Murder of Jazz
By Eric Nisenson
Nonfiction
(10/31/97)

The Art of the Comeback
By Donald Trump
Nonfiction
(10/30/97)

Memoirs of a Geisha
By Arthur Golden
Nonfiction
(10/29/97)

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R E L E A S E 2.0 A DESIGN FOR LIVING IN THE DIGITAL AGE_____

307 PAGES

BY SCOTT ROSENBERG | Esther Dyson is widely regarded in the technology industry as a smart person. For over two decades, she has parlayed her role as the editor of an industry-insider newsletter and the host of an annual CEO-level conference into a position of considerable influence -- in Washington, where she has served on various Net-related commissions and committees; in the world of the Net, where she chairs the Electronic Frontier Foundation; and in Russia and Eastern Europe, where she has involved herself in trying to bring the Internet into former Iron Curtain territories. Last year she was interviewed in the New York Times Magazine.

High time to put Dyson's face on a book jacket, someone in New York seems to have decided. Thus the publication of "Release 2.0: A Design for Living in the Digital Age" -- an odd melange of thoughtful observations about life on the Net that never quite finds a voice or passionate argument.

The book's title suggests that Dyson views it as a kind of upgrade to the newsletter, Release 1.0, a place to digest her knowledge and "help us think about the Internet and our roles as citizens, rule-makers, and community members." And so "Release 2.0" offers chapters on subjects like "Communities," "Work," "Education," "Governance," "Intellectual Property" and so on. Dyson's perspective on these issues is Silicon Valley orthodoxy: Markets are good, big institutions are bad (and on the way out) and the Net will provide market-based technological fixes to any social problems it might generate.

Most of Dyson's arguments are reasonable and sensible: The Net makes everyone at least a potential publisher and so erases traditional boundaries and encourages the formation of new kinds of communities. Most people just need to use their common sense online and they'll do fine. Ratings filters on the Net should be decentralized and market-based. The government shouldn't cripple encryption by requiring individuals to deposit their "keys" with third parties. And so on. Because it is organized by topic rather than by specific stories or controversies, "Release 2.0" tends to drone -- at times it reads like a compendium of acronym-laden EFF position-papers.

Books like "Release 2.0" are usually targeted at Net novices: Let an insider show you the ropes. It's hard to tell who Dyson's writing for, though. She wades into complex (and ephemeral) policy controversies more deeply than most laypeople might need, yet her "Road Ahead"-like effort to sketch scenarios of life on the Net in 2004 are going to be a little elementary for people who already know their way around the online world.

I kept wishing Dyson would turn her analytical mind more fiercely on some of the subtler implications of the points she makes. "Disclosure" is one of her touchstone principles -- it is "the fundamental value that makes everything else work"; yet she emerges from an industry that has built its wealth on vast heaps of non-disclosure agreements. She writes, "In the end, any large organization is a threat; all we can hope for is balance of power and continuing turnover" -- yet she has little to say about Microsoft's role.

"All these problems will get ironed out over time," she writes of the controversies over content ratings on the Web. That sort of confidence demands fuller explanation than "Release 2.0," for all its good common sense, provides.
SALON | Nov. 4, 1997

Read Esther Dyson's travel tips in Wanderlust's new department, Road Warrior.