Synopsis
Explores the dramatic difference between traditional media, such as books, theater, and film, and the recent development of cyberspace, which appears to shape not only how we communicate but increasingly the way we think. 20,000 first printing.
Reviews
This work is an engrossing exploration of what Holtzman (Digital Mantras: The Languages of Abstract and Virtual Worlds, LJ 6/1/94) believes is a fascinating march into a cultural realm as compelling as the New World that once tempted Columbus. Are you aware, for example, of the profound changes already brought about by the explosion of CD-ROMs, the World Wide Web, and virtual reality, which allow us, by nature of their nonlinearity, to jump from idea to idea, independent of the constraints of space and time? If you are, you are ready to greet the next generation of digital media, or "mosaics," which Holtzman says will reshape the very ways we think, much the way the alphabet has shaped thought and influenced the world for thousands of years. Literate, entertaining, and more than a little bit thrilling, the ideas herein will set readers on a course to a fertile land whose possibilities will lure them to disembark?and never look back. For all computer collections.?Geoff Rotunno, "Tri-Mix" Magazine, Goleta, Cal.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The aesthetics governing traditional architecture, art, music, and sculpture have been extended in the digital domain to allow more interactive and personalized encounters. Holtzman, who is both a computer musician and product marketing executive, tours the digital avant-garde: virtual cities where Web surfers hyperlink and cyber cafes where avatars chat; fractal art that approaches the infinitesimal; digital DNA that tracks the evolution of fictional flora and fauna; musical labyrinths created interactively in a Web-based theme park. Digital technology is nonlinear, Holtzman reminds the reader. Linear aesthetics are approaching a dead end, but a way out is offered through hyperlinks that allow users to direct their own path through the "start-anywhere go-anywhere experience" delivered in the mosaiclike world of cyberspace. Holtzman reins in his enthusiasm briefly to acknowledge certain limits in the digital world--pixelated images, flat textures, finite CD-ROM speeds, and so on. Nonetheless, he foresees the ultimate demise of books and print media, even though the footnotes in his own book primarily refer to printed materials. George Eberhart
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
