Internet Today!

This is a full colour, large-format book sporting screenshots, explanatory cartoons and design features that a British author of this type of volume can only covet.

Speaking as one of those authors myself [writes Jane Dorner] I am mildly envious of the glossy production support this book has been given. It is obviously easier to convey complex concepts like Public Key Encryption with a colourful cartoon, or what ftp-ing is in a series of diagrams than in lengthy explanatory text. All the same, it is fairly wordy in style and a little busy on the eye. Narrow columns (sometimes four words to a line) do not make for easy reading.


The book is written by two lecturers at the Mary Washington College and is aimed at college-level students. It is very thorough and detailed. It looks at the practical, socio-political and technical aspects of the Internet and contains step-by-step instructions on sending and sorting email, writing web pages, using navigational icons, how to do a Boolean search, and much else.

At the end of each chapter are questions and exercises designed to test the students reading of the text. Anyone who has the leisure to work through from beginning to end of the book will almost certainly gain as much knowledge of how the Internet functions as they could possibly want. There's a good index and glossary.

It is, however, software-specific all examples are for Netscape Communicator (so Microsoft Explorer, users of Opera, or any of the popular email programs are disadvantaged). Nor is it the most recent version of Netscape (its icon betrays that). It's a brave book that calls itself Internet Today when it has to have been written at least a year before publication.

I noticed a number of statements that have been overtaken by developments. But someone will say the same of my book, so I'll bite that back. It is one of the hazards of writing about technologies that move faster than our ability to capture them. Do we, then, need books about the Internet at all? I believe we do.