Books I like and highly recommend posted to Nettime 10 May 2004
From Raw Nerve Books
Sue Thomas, Hello World, travels in virtuality
This is an odd work, a mix of real and imaginary journeys, discoursing on psychogeography, Bachelard, and a broad-based view of the Net along the way. As a mix it's intense and entrancing, and it demonstrates the ease with which computers, electronic communications, and lives all intertwine beyond the home. This isn't the typical mobile technology journey, but a journey of integration, and it's as such that I highly recommend it. My only concern - and I have no answer for this - how much, today, should one describe the Net and its communications systems? As Katherine Hayles points out on the back cover, the book is 'Highly recommended for first- time users and those who want to try dipping their toes into the cyberwaters.' But for those of us who are familiar with the technologies, the value is elsewhere - following this journey, and Thomas's lived and interpenetrated spaces, across the world. There is an associated website by the way, http://www.travelsinvirtuality.com . (This is by the way a work I wish I could have written, but my own journeys have seemed too monstrous and tangled, too compressed. There's a sense of space in Thomas's book that's both open and comforting.)
This review is reprinted from http://www.nettime.org/
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