BKBLDIEC.RVW   980801

"Blueprint to the Digital Economy", Don Tapscott/Alex Lowy/David
Ticoll, 1998, 0-07-063349-5, U$24.95/C$35.95
%A   Don Tapscott
%A   Alex Lowy
%A   David Ticoll
%C   300 Water Street, Whitby, Ontario   L1N 9B6
%D   1998
%G   0-07-063349-5
%I   McGraw-Hill Ryerson/Osborne
%O   U$24.95/C$35.95 800-565-5758 fax: 905-430-5020
%P   410 p.
%T   "Blueprint to the Digital Economy: Creating Wealth in the Era of 
      E-Business"

The first paragraph of the preface tries to explain the purpose of the
book, as is usual.  Stripped of its new age jargon, the section
appears to say that a lot of people talked about how business might
use new communications.

This work is mostly a collection of essays from extremely important,
and therefore very busy, industry leaders.  In other words, most of
the papers have been written by PR departments.  Remaining articles
have been contributed by "independent consultants" looking for
business or speaking engagements.  The results are predictable.

Part one is entitled "The New Rules of Competition" but doesn't say
much about it, beyond generally opining that we are moving to a more
cooperative age.  (The Age of Aquarius, presumably.)  The first and
last essays in the section demonstrate that the rapidly changing times
provide limitless opportunities for meaning-challenged buzzphrases and
content-free diagrams.  The bracketed papers hope that General Motors,
IBM, Intel, and Sun Microsystems will be ready for whatever comes
along.

Part two informs us of the startling fact that the times they are a
changing.  (Surprise!)  Businesses are seeing change in the fields of
banking, newspapers, family snaps, education, telecommunications, and
courier services.  I must make note of Carol Twigg's excellent
contribution, which presents not only hard "customer" data, but real
technology as well.  It is one of the few interesting bits in this
aggregation of promotional puff pieces.

Part three is supposed to tell us how the new technologies will help
businesses to cope.  Instead, Oracle is still flogging network
computers.  We are informed that the Internet is a good thing.  Nortel
tells us that the Internet is a good thing but needs to be made as
reliable as the phone.  Sprint tell us that the Internet is a good
thing but needs to be made as reliable as the phone.  Xerox tells us
that we need a new browser.  (Actually, Weiser and Brown's paper is
much more interesting than that sounds, but isn't really a lot more
useful in business terms.)

Part four supposedly looks at governance in a networked age.  One of
the essays is an apologia for the Clinton administration policies,
another is a vague, hand-waving explanation of "cyberspace."  However,
Stephen Kobrin's incisive examination of the futility of the concept
of territoriality when applied to the net, and Vinton Cerf's
unsurprising but well-grounded look at criminal misbehaviour online
elevate the quality of the section significantly.

Last night I reviewed a book that warned about the dangers of
potentially ignorant, unfiltered, biased, and opinionated information
being disseminated on the Internet, mixed in with and disguising the
few real gems of information.  This current work proves that the same
point can be made about published, and highly publicized, books.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 1998   BKBLDIEC.RVW   980801