One of the wonderful things about working on the Internet is the near guarantee that help will arrive from unexpected places. In this case, a local guide prepared so that a system administrator at a small college wouldn't have to answer so many pesky questions about how to use The Net has turned out to be just the key to helping people all over the world get up to speed on just the way The Internet works.
Zen and the Art of the Internet is more than just a collection of recipes of how to connect to this or that site or what arcane commands to type at what prompts. There's a lot of that to be sure- The Net still has what John Perry Barlow terms a "savage user interface," and some amount of hand-holding is needed to guide people through the rough spots. Much more than that, though,
Zen and the Art of the Internet gives the new user of The Net some clue as to why things are as they are, how people interact in this environment, and an approach to make their use of the internet less of a hunt through the wilderness.
Brendan has written a book which has been on the wish lists of network builders for a long time- a clear, straightforward, and engaging description of what The Internet is and why
you want to be connected to it. While large sums of money may build bigger and faster networks,
Zen argues that it is the mass of well trained, literate, and interesting people behind the wires and computers that make them really successful!
Edward Vielmetti
Ann Arbor, MI
emv@msen.com
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