Sometimes stiff, but should reward thoughtful readers.
A look at the unexpected consequences of the computer revolution.
Green (Information Technology/Monash Univ., Australia) sees the key impact of the growth of computerization as being an increase not just in the quantity but in the complexity of information available. Comparing the capabilities of early computers and those currently in wide use, he estimates a 100,000-fold increase in data from the mainframes of 20 years ago to the desktop model he uses today. Even more radical growth is evident on the Internet, which 15 years ago was used almost entirely by academics and the defense establishment. More significantly, the ability to combine sets of data has increased, allowing the discovery of hitherto unexpected relationships and also creating a new degree of complexity. Computer design has developed tools to help users handle this complexity; one such tool, for example, is modularity, the breaking-down of complex tasks into smaller subroutines, not unlike filing systems that sort data first by broad categories, then by narrower ones. A similar principle allows passing messages over large networks in an economical number of steps. The linear arrangement of data characteristic of the book is no longer necessary for computers, which can easily find connections between randomly sorted data. An example is data mining, or the use of computers to discover relationships in a vast quantity of data—say, analyzing computerized checkout records in grocery stores to find individual customers’ buying patterns. Similarly, biotechnology has bloomed as computers have made it possible to analyze genetic data, with results both positive (as in new therapies) and ethically nightmarish (as in cloning). Likewise, the global village created by the Internet creates opportunities both for increased understanding and for increased crime, from Nigerian e-mail scams to massive terrorist attacks. While Green is clearly a cybernetic booster, he doesn’t duck hard questions.
Sometimes stiff, but should reward thoughtful readers.Pub Date: May 28, 2005
ISBN: 1-86508-655-X
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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