The info superhwy is more than a short cut to every book in the Lib of Congress. It is creating a totally new, global social fabric #QotD

"The information superhighway is more than a short cut to every book in the Library of Congress. It is creating a totally new, global social fabric."
- Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (1995)

Nice to see that one of the icons of the Internet Age, Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital, is, as of today, available as an ebook from Amazon.

First published way way back in 1995, the book quickly became a touchstone for the emerging Internet culture. The book led to a number of  cognates, including, from my own library world, Being Analog: Creating Tomorrow's Libraries by Walt Crawford (1999).

By great luck, I was able to spend three days with Negroponte (including having him as a dinner table companion) at the Envisioning Our Information Future and How to Educate for It conference.

I enjoyed our dinner conversation and especially his on target and provocative comments during the meeting.

Here are a few quotes pulled from Being Digital:

"Thomas Jefferson advanced the concept of libraries and the right to check out a book free of charge. But this great forefather never considered the likelihood that 20 million people might access a digital library electronically and withdraw its contents at no cost."

"Tomorrow’s will have as much or more to do with “pulling,” where you and I reach into the network and check out something the way we do in a library or video-rental store today."