Reader’s Diary

Howard Rheingold

Howard Rheingold had an idea: wireless communications changes the way people live. “Smart Mobs” (”mobs” for “groups of people” and “mobiles”) is the result of his investigation of that concept. He interviewed researchers and users from Tokyo to Scandinavia, looking into mobile communication’s effects on everything from teen social habits to Phillipine politics. He mentions cell phones, text messaging, wearable computers, location-sensitive devices, and more.

Rheingold’s writing is both thoughtful and thought-provoking, colloquial and well-researched. His subject is still developing, so reaches no definite conclusions. The technology can lead to good and ill, liberty and repression. The reader is left thinking that life really is different in the 21st century.

Steven Johnson

Emergence is the idea that independent agents following simple rules can, en masse, exhibit complex, seemingly directed behavior. The classic example of emergence is the ant colony.

Emergence is a fascinating concept. It not only explains parts of the natural world but can be applied to the development of man-made systems.

Unfortunately, once Steven Johnson gets past ants, his book degenerates into generalization. He talks about theories of brain function and city development while almost totally ignoring more concrete examples from the artificial life field. In the final chapters he finds emergence everywhere, and his heated superficial prose is reminiscent of the dot com hype of a few years ago: vague claims and little substance. Sadly, Johnson is no Steven Levy.

Colleen McCullough

This volume in McCullough’s series of historical novels set in ancient Rome brings the Story of Sulla to a close. Sulla dies about half way through the book and the rest of it focusrd on the life of young Julius Caesar. The first part feels like it belongs with the previous volume.

I started the next book in the series but it didn’t hold my interest like the Marius/Sulla story did. I may pick it up again, though: despite McCullough’s too much talk/not enough action style, her portrayal of ancient Rome remains appealing.