BKINTLIT.RVW 980327 "Internet Literacy", Fred T. Hofstetter, 1998, 0-07-029387-2 %A Fred T. Hofstetter fth@udel.edu %C 300 Water Street, Whitby, Ontario L1N 9B6 %D 1998 %G 0-07-029387-2 %I McGraw-Hill Ryerson/Osborne %O 905-430-5000 fax: 905-430-5020 louisea@McGrawHill.ca %P 304 p. %T "Internet Literacy" Yes, there are various types of literacy. Yes, the ability to effectively use the Internet is probably a literacy. Yes, Internet literacy is important, and may remain so for a while. But literacy is about concepts, not keypunching. Part one presents background information about the Internet. Not all of this material is reliable, as the definitions in chapter one make clear. Being "on" the Internet seems to be defined by having your hands "on" the keyboard of a microcomputer connected to an ISP (Internet Service Provider) with a dialup IP link. Besides assuming that BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems) can't be connected to the Internet (a rather quaint assumption), the book does not make clear the importance of the distinction between using a terminal to access an Internet connected computer, and using an Internet connected micro. In may cases, there is no significant difference for the user's purposes. Listserv is used generically to refer to any mailing list program. Client-server computing is defined such that client means receive and server means send. Many pictures are used in the text, but these figures do not clearly illustrate concepts. Chapter two looks at the changes in society caused by the Internet, but the data presented is random and poorly analyzed and presented. In discussing convergence, for example, the text leaves the impression that all current forms of media are available and carried over the Internet. While this is technically possible, it is happening only in a very limited fashion. Part two tersely reviews the options for getting connected to the Internet. Chapter three provides copious misinformation about telecommunications technology. Bandwidth gets confused with propagation speed. The numbers for ISDN are wrong. Cable modems *do* use modems, just as Ethernet uses modems: they just run at different frequencies than telephone modems. PPP (Point to Point Protocol), as a protocol, doesn't come "bundled" with Netscape Navigator Personal Edition, although a dialer and Winsock stack, as software, do. (OK, I will grant you that the paragraph on token ring is pretty good.) Chapter four spends a great deal more time telling you how to surf the Web. Personal communication is the topic of part three. It starts with netiquette, in chapter five, but only in a rather banal fashion. Chapter six presents instructions on common email functions in Netscape and Outlook. I was going to correct the title of chapter seven and say it was about mailing lists, but, no, it *is* only about Listserv, and any similarity to the variety of other mailing list programs on the net is coincidental. Chapter eight again shows instructions for reading newsgroups through Netscape and Internet Explorer. Various type of real time interaction are briefly mentioned in chapter nine. Telnet, in chapter ten, isn't about personal communication but I guess they had to put it somewhere. Finding information on the Internet is a major task and skill. Part four isn't up to the challenge with a quick look at search sites, file types (no players), downloading (and a useless mention of viruses), and bibliographic citation styles in chapters eleven through fourteen. Part five is a Web page tutorial, with chapter fifteen listing various tools, sixteen listing components, seventeen mentioning a few HTML (HyperText Markup Language) tags, eighteen giving a few instructions on using Netscape Composer and Microsoft FrontPage, nineteen showing some screens from Paint Shop Pro and Graphic Converter, twenty mentioning that there are more advanced functions, and twenty one deals with swiping someone else's page. Chapter twenty two starts with uploading a file and ends with the reader becoming a Webmaster. Part six states that Web pages can use multimedia (in chapter twenty three) and how to record a sound file (in chapter twenty four). Part seven looks to the future. Chapter twenty five discusses social issues. (Cookies were originally intended to maintain state, not advertising, and since the US signed the international agreement on copyright a notice is not necessary, though possibly useful.) Some new technologies are mentioned in chapter twenty six. Some magazines are listed in chapter twenty seven. (OK, it also gives instructions for signing up on Edupage and Tourbus. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.) Questions are set at the end of chapters. In some cases these are the "parrot back what I've said" type, but in most cases the questions are open ended discussion starters. Given the content of the book in relation to the questions, many discussions prompted by the questions would be no more than poolings of ignorance. A Web site of resources to support specific sections of the book is to be found at http://www.udel.edu/interlit. The errors cited in this review are only a sampling, but it may be felt that this book is intended, after all, as a course for those first year college students who are seeing the net for the first time, and wanting just to use it rather than to become network consultants. To that I would reply that the book claims to provide Internet literacy. Literacy is not simply the ability to recognize and open a book, and to sound out a word. Equally, electronic literacy is not simply the ability to invoke a mail program or click on a Web link. Oversimplification, to the point of inaccuracy, is not in anyone's interest. There are any number of works which explain the situation clearly, not least among which are Kehoe's "Zen and the Art of the Internet" (cf. BKZENINT.RVW), Gilster's "The Internet Navigator" (cf. BKINTNAV.RVW), and Comer's "The Internet Book" (cf. BKINTBOK.RVW). If literacy is the aim, then Gilster's more recent "Digital Literacy" (cf. BKDGTLIT.RVW) gives a much better idea of the skills needed for survival in a netted world. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1998 BKINTLIT.RVW 980327