| Simon Biggs on 30 Jun 2000 15:38:56 -0000 |
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| <nettime> review of The Internet and Everyone |
Review by Simon Biggs of The Internet and Everyone by John Chris Jones isbn 1 899858 20 2 592 pages Published 2000 by oooEllipsis www.ellipsis.com �@ellipsis.co.uk, The Internet and Everyone is a book about the Internet. It is also a book about almost everything else. It is one of those texts that ranges across subjects, points of view, opinions and events with an eclecticism both inspiring and frustrating; inspiring in the way the author shows us the connectedness of things�frustrating in that we are unable to fully explore any one element of the writers thoughts. The text makes and breaks connections between things like a prose poem. The Internet and Everyone was commissioned by the publishers as long ago as 1995, and much of it first appeared on the web, at the publishers website, some years ago (www.ellipsis.com/i+e/001.html). Its journey to print was clearly a long one. In many respects this text would be better read online, or at least as an electronic hypertext. However, it is still the case that the "old media" of print demands, and is by far the most successful means of achieving, concentrated and structured reading. John Chris Jones's approach to the writing of this book was clearly hypertextual. He mentions in the forward his use of Cagean techniques such as randomising chapter sequences, and he asks us, the reader, to contemplate what sort of reader we might be and how we might want to approach this text (linearly, randomly or by structured navigation). The author observes that "�the purpose of writing a book has now changed�for each one now can be writing, and living, the book of her/his life�" and sets himself the task of writing just such a post-Derridean text. The body of the book is structured as a series of twenty-five letters written by the author to the publishers. Each letter has one or more "attachments" (each letter was originally an email) that make up the primary content, whilst the letters give us an insight into the author's relationship to the texts and also function to create a deconstructive distancing relative to the subject matter. The book as a whole reads somewhat like a diary as the letters give us such intimate access to the authors thoughts as he goes about his work. The texts that these letters bind together range across a diverse and often confusing range of subjects. Stylistically the writing has something of the Victorian diarist's manner about it, and similarly the content echoes the "cabinet of curiosities" approach to etymology. Each of the "attachments" reflect on one of a diverse range of subjects, such as the ergonomics of interface design, the textuality of email, the experience of visiting a medical specialist, an interpretation and critique of a contemporary dance performance and the hermeneutics of a self-referential web of homepages. In a Kafkaesque sense the connections between each of these and the many other subjects are clear. For example, Jones implies a comparative critique between mechanical and electronic manufacturing processes with the character of the doctors surgery by placing "attachments" about each in proximity to one another. Jones regards each as an example of an interface between people and processes and it is here that what appear to be totally different subjects are found to be the same. Reading this book we are very aware that we are engaging with a very particular and singular writer. In many respects this book is unfinished and unfinishable. As the author points out, endings are not necessarily appropriate anymore. In the last section of the text Jones admits he fears he has failed, that it was a mistake to organise the texts as he has and to bind them together with the letters to his publishers. He muses that he has abrogated his authorial responsibility and obligations by choosing this route, where he has had no need to impose a single coherent structure upon the text. This might well be, but this reader cannot see that the author had much choice in the matter. Any attempt to create such a singular text would have failed in evoking any particular sense of its subject. In the end The Internet and Everyone reads as a book that had to exist in the form that it does. The Internet and Everyone is probably the least needed book, the last book one would regard as required reading, for understanding its subject - and yet this book, whilst not essential, manages to suggest the essence of the net and bring to us a sense of what we are becoming as we adapt to living with/in this new medium. It is essential reading for anyone who has found the net become an important part of their life. Simon Biggs 30.6.2000 Simon Biggs London GB [email protected] http://www.easynet.co.uk/simonbiggs/ Professor of Research (Fine Art) Art and Design Research Centre School of Cultural Studies Sheffield Hallam University Sheffield, UK http://www.shu.ac.uk/ # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [email protected] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]