Another entry in the tired line of books expressing alarm over the Internet and its effect on our eroding communities. The author (Technical Communications/Clarkson Univ.) starts by waxing poetic about his own rustic town in upstate New York, and then worries about what globalization and the increased popularity of the Internet will do to it. He writes, ``In immersing ourselves in the electronic net, we are ignoring our real dying communities.'' To his credit, Doheny-Farina does counter the wild hyperbole of some of the more enthusiastic Net-hype, which promotes the Internet as a replacement for real social interaction. But such books always use the worst addicts and most tedious online conversations to discredit the Internet, and they completely ignore all of the far more significant causes for our troubled communities. This volume is no exception. The author uses boring chat-room conversations and the text-based networks called MOOs (now out of style) to illustrate his points. As a solution, he recommends steering the Net toward community networks that stimulate local interaction. No realistic consideration is given to how the Internet, which ignores geographic boundaries, can be used in this manner. Even worse, the tone is overly academic, and readers seeking simple prose will choke on sentences like ``This vision represents the manifestation of our will to virtuality.'' The author also falls into one of the greatest pitfalls facing writers on modern technology: The pace of change is so great, they often miss the latest developments. Doheny-Farina fails to properly consider the emergence of the Web, which has shifted the focus of the Internet from text-based chat communities to publishing, commerce, and entertainment. Though his concern for our troubled localities is justified, Doheny-Farina takes the wrong path in blaming the Internet and seeing in it the means to a solution.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-300-06765-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
