First Review

The first review of my book Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web has appeared. It’s from Kirkus, one of the four early review publications, intended for bookstore owners, book review editors, and librarians. (By the way, have I mentioned just how sexy sexy sexy are bookstore owners, book review editors and librarians? It’s true!)

Here’s what I think is a fair excerpt of the review, with some explanatory interjections:

A Web visionary’s [That’s a promotion from “garrulous asshole,” right? Or is it a synonymn?] largely [“largely” means “very very” in the English, am I correct?] successful attempt to place the new medium within a social and cultural context.

…though his subtitle is a bit premature [I say: Why wait?], his presentation remains straightforward, avoiding the McLuhanesque convolutions that embellished, and often obscured, attempts to understand the previous new medium of television… Weinberger looks at the effects the Internet has had on every institution it touches, from business, to education, to government [Actually, I don’t, but this seems like a better book than I wrote so we won’t quibble]. Terming the Web both a “wanker’s paradise” [Heh heh, they said “wanker”] and a “collective, global work of literature,” the author concludes that … the Web hype was not “unwarranted, only misdirected.” … The overall focus … is on the social and cultural ramifications of a medium “constantly in the throes [Don’t I get credit for spelling “throes” correctly?] of self-invention.” Conceding that the Web is “profoundly unmanaged” by design, he goes on to describe a realm where nearness is based, not on contiguity, but on similarity of interests, where, in a paraphrase of Andy Warhol’s bon mot, “everyone will be famous to fifteen people.” At the opposite end of the spectrum from the pointy-headed digerati elite [What do you have to do to get a pointy head around here???] …. Weinberger is a democrat who sees the Web not as a medium of mass stupefaction like TV but as a new and intense form of social interaction [Um, except for all the wanking]. He concludes on the hopeful note that the Web can be a “place free of what’s been holding back our better selves.”:

The premises here are ultimately neither radical [Damn, I told my editor I should have said “fuck” more!] nor obtuse, and readers with a general familiarity with the Web will be prepared to understand these coherent and cogent arguments [Slashdotters excepted].

Let’s see how that blurbs: “Web visionary … successful attempt … McLuhanesque … pointy-headed … profoundly unmanaged … mass stupefaction…” It’ll look great on the book jacket!

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