Fred

This book is kind of odd because it's from around 2000 with a focus on early implementation of digital media and computers into businesses, buildings, libraries, homes, etc., and the interplay between digital media and the internet, and the physical world or communities. (To a small extent it talks about entirely online communities as places, but primarily it's about physical places in the context of digital media and network implementation.) A lot of early examples and early trends it talks about are so ubiquitous or significant now that the book feels kind of "obvious" or dated ("The tremendous success of companies such as Borders..."). A lot of the book is examples of these early implementations or specific numbers given in order to demonstrate trends.

Some of the trends relate to where business decide to reside. Outside of the general principles, the specifics aren't extremely of interest to me, and I don't have the knowledge to know whether they still hold generally true, or whether the specific trends in the specific locations still hold.

Though a lot of the more general points and principles are still interesting and useful to read about, for me, and I don't think have really been dated. Although they are interesting to me, the general principles (architectural or related to urban planning) might already be known to anyone who is already familiar with those fields - so as far as my knowledge goes, it may be the case that the only information of value to those familiar with the fields would be those specific cases and trends. I don't think the descriptions of cases or trends necessarily go into a lot of detail.

It's written mainly from an architectural/urban planning perspective and the meaning of some of the terminology isn't clear to me.