ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Sunday, January 28, 1996               TAG: 9601300123
SECTION: BOOKS                    PAGE: F-4  EDITION: METRO 
                                             TYPE: BOOK REVIEW 
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY LARRY SHIELD 

BOOKS IN BRIEF

ROAD WARRIORS; Dreams and Nightmares along the Information Highway.

By Daniel Burstein and David Kline. Dutton. $24.95.

The use of the term "information highway" instead of "information superhighway" in the title of this book is the first indication of how accurate and complete a book these authors planned to write. The information highway is far from super, but this book is a dynamic, thought-provoking, strategic analysis of digital information exchange.

By interviewing the big players in the big companies gambling big dollars on big communications projects, the authors illuminate an excitement level probably last felt by the railroad robber barons of the late 19th century. The vistas for data are as great today as the vistas of transcontinental rail was then. The stakes are as high, the men as interesting, and the casual benefit for everyone is as great.

THE EMPERORUS VIRTUAL CLOTHES: The Truth about Internet Culture.

By Dinty Moore. Algonquin. $17.95.

Here is another book that looks at the "information superhighway" and finds it is about as "super" as Hardy Road during an ice storm.

Dinty Moore (the liner notes say that this is really his name) spent a year searching for humanity along the Internet. What he found is a culture not unlike that found everywhere else. The same alienation, the same loneliness, the same lack of common courtesy found in current society is found in cybersociety.

For the information highway to have any relevance, there must be destinations average people want to go to. To date, more promises exist than real destinations.

Larry Shield trains horses and dogs in Franklin County.

LENGTH: Short :   42 lines