'Being digital' means that the modes of representing the world in information terms (video, audio, photo, thermal differences, etc.) is going to be increasingly done by bits. Information now carried by different media (books, tapes, compact discs, etc.) can be encoded in bits as well. When all information is spoken in the same form, it can mix without difficulty. Negroponte calls this 'commingling'. Using the analogy of the human brain again, the difference between sound and vision is easy to make: acoustic information comes by way of the ears, and visual information comes by way of the eyes. Information systems do not have this natural 'signature' to know what the nature of the signals is. Therefore, Negroponte argues, some bits will contain information on the other bits: 'bits-about-bits'. These two ideas, commingling bits and bits-about-bits, give a dramatic new impact on the world, Negroponte argues.

Being digital contains a massive amount of ideas springing from these notions, but also from other issues that Negroponte has encountered in his lifetime working at the Medialab and elsewhere. The most important are:

• Fallacies in television-development: The high-definition fallacy
• The power of open systems versus closed systems
• Legal problems of being digital: cross-ownership and copyright
• The economics of being digital: new models required
• The fallacy of dominant interface design versus ubiquitous interfaces
• The need for user-conscious computers
• The use of the finger as a pointing device
• The responsive/physical-feedback interface
• The potential of an eye-tracking interface
• The need for voice recognition
• Computers require user-models
• The fallacy of the "Anything, anytime, anywhere" paradigm for telecommunications
• ... which should be "Nothing, never, nowhere" unless it matters
• Computers in education
• Communicating devices for better co-ordination
• New synthesis between art and machine

All these issues are dealt with in a very broad manner, in a very brief outline. This characterizes the book. Being digital is a great book for ideas, but it is not a sourcebook. It does not generate deep understanding in any of the issues raised. What it does do, however, is generate a grasp of the breadth of developments and to give an indication of the scope of the influence of commingling bits.

Being digital, through its wealth of sketchy ideas, provides a good structure for expanded discussion. As stated before, the book-form goes against most of the issues basic to Negropontes ideas. Therefore, it should be possible to access the ideas in ways that are advocated in the book. When placed on the Internet, for example, the book can become the structure for discussing the ideas, replying to issues raised, expanding the matter into actual projects and research, and add multimedia to enhance understanding. This has been done by the Cyberdock version of Negropontes book. This site comes close to the previously mentioned criteria (check it out!)

It is not clear whether the author himself made the subtitle 'The road map for survival on the information superhighway', but since the book does not have a focus point (it has countless focus points), this is hardly true. In fact, it is wrong. The use of the subtitle suggests jumping on the highly fashionable 'Internet'-bandwagon and lure just that many extra buyers into it... Not very nice.

The book leaves the impression of Being written in great haste by an author who wanted to record as many ideas as possible in a preset number of pages. It is anecdotal to the utterly boring, thus loosing space for elaborating on the matters introduced. A tiny fragment has been reserved for discussing the drawbacks of these new developments, detailed attention to which would have been welcome by such a knowledgeable author.
For someone interested in the broad issues concerning new technologies, Being digital gives a readable and high-paced introduction. It offers enough fuel for debate on matters that will have global influence. However, because of its rather superficial treatment of themes, readers will be required to turn elsewhere (save for the word 'I', the book lacks a well-founded set of references). People who are knowledgeable on the Internet can turn either to the references included here or search by themselves.

Bit: "A bit has no color, size, or weight, and it can travel at the speed of light. It is the smallest atomic element in the DNA of information. It is a state of being: on or off, true or false, up or down, in or out, black or white. For practical purposes we consider a bit to be a 1 or a 0. The meaning of the 1 or the 0 is a separate matter." [p 14 Being digital]

Commingle: "When all media is digital - because bits are bits - two fundamental and immediate results will be observed. First, bits commingle effortlessly. They start to get mixed up and can be used and reused together or separately. The mixing of audio, video, and data is called multimedia; it sounds complicated, but is nothing more than commingled bits." [p 18 Being digital]

Bits-about-bits: "Second, a new kind of bit is born - a bit that tells you about the other bits. These new bits are typically "headers," which are well-known to newspaper reporters who file "slugs" (which we never see) to identify a story. Such headers are also familiar to scientific authors who are asked to provide key words with their journal articles. These header bits can be a table of contents or a description of the date that follow." [p 18 Being digital]

Being digital is expanded on the Internet. Check out the following sites:

• Being digital homepage, by the publisher
• OBS cyberspace extension of Being digital

• The official list added to the Being digital homepage
• How the message gets across
• This one is very rude: don't say I did not warn you!
• Another eager reviewer
• And another
• And another
• Adding crits on Internet books
• List of Negroponte articles for Wired; I'm not sure if they don't have a list themselves. Find out for yourself.