This book really stinks big time. Its a load of cyberwanking buzzword hauling. The accompanying record though has some underground low tech garage studio charm to it.

'All that is solid melts into air'... description of advanced capitalism by Marx. These words are a good description of how our media landscape transforms the meaning of anything... Arthur Kroker in his book and CD 'Spasm' give us the sound and insight into this 'meltdown' taking place all around us. Like Marshall McLuhan, Kroker asks "What haven't you noticed lately?" Kroker goes ahead and tells you, from biotechnology to music sampling, he hangs on a point of view - before it melts...

Bruce Sterling's introduction to Kroker's 'Spasm' is worth the price of admission alone, it's short, but sets the tone.

You will not always agree, but you will think, not many books or CDs that do that these days. Give Kroker a spin.

This is a popular text for your basic college TV and Radio intro class. I have used it for several years myself and it's a fine overview of the subject. Gets pretty technical on electronic stuff and has less on broadcast history and personalities (in my view). Also, since the death of one author the book has become more dated each year and will continue to do so unless they do a fairly significant rewrite.

I remember reading this book circa 1994 as a graduate student at Rice University. It was very interesting, and I found Bruce Sterling's praise of librarians & libraries and the importance of freedom of information very eloquent and uplifting. Hans Moravec, on the other hand, I find to be one sick puppy and scary to boot. He's most famous for wanting to be able to download his consciousness into a computer and attain "virtual immortality". Having read more recent works, such as Theodore Roszack's critical study _The Cult of Information_, I can see that Moravec's ideas are just idle fantasy now...probably never realizable. David Brin also had some very sensitive, cautious words, which I deeply appreciated. I think this book was a rare convergence of librarians & SF writers in the time of the early 90s when Cyberpunk was all the rage (it's not dead yet, but it's not as BIG as it was then, either) and it was easy to be giddy about technology, etc. The internet was still young then. I think we've learned a great deal more and are much more realistic now than when the summary of this conference was put together in book form...This book is now pretty much a historical document more than it is anything useful for a 21st century contemporary reader.

The stickers in the book have to go in order in order to make the book understandable... I found myself putting all the stickers in it, because my son (age 4) didn't want to put them where they belong (let alone put them in straight)...

The stickers come off easily, and I suspect that in a few days they will be all over... These stickers are not REUSABLE... and will lose there stick... Just like any other normal sticker. the book is skinny and flimsy! I'm not impressed...

The front of the book shows sticker that go on the pictures... not the case at all... It's more like read 5 words and figure out what the picture represents... blah.

The butterfly on the cover of the book that looks like a sticker isn't even in the book.

Another thing... when I was pealing out the stickers... I ended up bending the flimsy book up... grrr.

the first and last page are the sticker pages... which the used up sheet can not easily be removed... I did try but gave up before destroying the book for good.