Shift!: The Unfolding Internet - Hype, Hope and History Paperback - 2003 - 1st Edition

From the jacket flap

In this unique book Edward Burman argues that to date we have been unable to see the wood for the trees in Internet life. Undergoing a Shift! comparable to the introduction of electricity, the telephone or the motor car, our various attempts to make sense of it have led us down a series of blind alleys or 'pre-paradigms (most visibly the overvaluation of the dot com companies)  all apparently based on contemporary fact and built to last, but all ultimately damaging to popular belief in the new mediums potential. Unsure of the ground ahead, our steps have faltered, and in 2002 there is a tendency in companies to underestimate the impact of the Internet, as powerful as that in 1999 to overestimate it.

And yet, the author counters, see how far we have come! Already we take instant connection for granted, and the Internet is embedded deep in our personal and working lives. The problem, he explains, is that as we undergo a "Shift!" of this magnitude we are necessarily unable to see where we are going. Thus we persist with old terminology and models in the new paradigm. Companies continue to place 'tollbooths in a world designed to offer freedom of movement. People still see the Internet as the province of the young and gifted. There is not even widespread agreement as to what the Internet is supposed to do - what it is for.

Drawing on colourful vignettes from the scientific past to inform its vision of the technological and cultural future, "Shift!" looks ahead to a time when the public will indeed embrace the Internet as wholly as the electric light, the telephone and the car - when capability becomes usability and the benefits outweigh the costs for young and old alike; whennew ways of learning change education forever; when the Internet becomes so much a part of life as to be invisible. And when the "Shift!" is complete.