Newspapers and magazines (including this one) have been talking for months about the Information Superhighway (or I-Way or Infobahn or Net). This book claims to tell the “whole story” about what it is, why we need it, how it will be built and who is involved.

The first thing to realise about it is that it has a profoundly America-centric perspective. The author is American, and much of the interest in the Infobahn has been stirred by the US government and various American entertainment conglomerates, so this is not surprising. It is disappointing, though, to read a book like this one and see not one mention of France’s Minitel - the only successful mass market computerised information service. In fact, you could count the mentions of Europe or, indeed, the world outside the US on the fingers of one hand. It’s true things are relatively quiet in this arena outside North America, but they aren’t completely dead. Singapore is another place that isn’t even mentioned although it will probably have a completely networked society before the US does.

Even as a book primarily about the American Information Superhighway it is strangely constructed. It contains surprisingly little about the Internet, giving a brief history of its emergence and summarising it rather dismissively as hard to use. On the other hand, the book seems to be “padded out” with detailed discussion of subjects that are only distantly relevant, like six pages on PC virus protection software, five pages on setting up better sound for your TV in the home or ten pages explaining what goes inside a desktop computer.

Since this book is 225 pages long, it would be surprising if there wasn’t some useful information in it, and once you’ve read it through, you will have a pretty good understanding of how the phone companies, cable companies and computer companies are jostling for position in the US. Unfortunately, there is little real analysis of the way things will develop, beyond the recycling of tired cliches, and the information that is there is buried among pages of irrelevancies. So far, I don’t know of another book written about the Information Superhighway as a whole, but I’m sure such books will come, and any alternative whould be an improvement on this one.