<nettime> amazon.com reviews

[McKenzie Wark <mwark@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au>]

Here's the reviews of the Nettime reader currently on then amazon.com
site: 


Customer Comments 
Average Custmoer Review: [4 stars]
NUmber of Reviews 4

A reader from Northern California , June 23, 1999  [4 stars]
Theory and practice do mix 

I was expecting more self-indulgence than I found here. There is,
suprisingly, quite a bit of clear prose in here, mixed in with ascii art
and high theory. I loved the "cooking pot markets"  essay about the free
circulation of ideas on the net.  This book is a gift, full of ideas and
original thinking. I didn't see any of the hackneyed leftism that
anti-alienation reviewer below noted. If thinking and words are not your
bag, don't read any book. If you know the power of words and that ascii is
the true gift of the net, then read this book!

A reader from London , June 18, 1999  [1 star]
Alienation? 

When I bought this book, I hoped to discover some fresh, practical,
engaged and witty viewpoints on net culture and net politics - instead, I
found a heap of old-school pomo navel gazing rhetorics, far removed from
relevant action and practice. Pretty disappointing.  Sympathetic, because
avantgardistic and marginal? Maybe, but it'll take much more than this
ivory tower in order to get things done, to raise active awareness and
engagement - which we need much more than any piece of self-conceited
babble. Get a life!

A reader from San Francisco , June 9, 1999  [five stars]
Still timely cause it cuts deep 

This book is packed with words. Revenge indeed; knowledge indeed. 
Something really is happening on the internet, but you'll half to cast
your net as wide as these far-flung correspondents if you want to limn it.
Big names in net writing are here: Erik Davis, Manuel De Landa, and Mark
Dery are excerpted, but a gaggle of names you've never heard of matches
them word for word, writing about, munging, life on net time. Worth it
just for some of the liner notes and ascii art....

A reader from Austin, Texas , May 12, 1999  [5 stars]
It's Not For Everybody, But Hey, I'm Not Everybody 

"Nettime" is a mailing list for anarcho, Euro-lefty, digital-arts people. 
Nettime is what WIRED magazine would be if WIRED came out of a squat in
East Berlin, and had no funding, no ads, no paper and no ink. Nettime is
one of the few Internet lists that could generate a book worth reading. 
Much of this book is frankly inexplicable -- imagine cyberfeminists whose
first language is Latvian discussing why Deleuze and Guattari made them
start an interactive website -- but there are many gems amid the murk, and
frankly, I rather enjoy a good wallow in murk-for-murk's-sake. The
publisher, Autonomedia, deserves support for their unflinching devotion to
zero-commercial-potential nosebleed postmodernism. 

__________________________________________
"We no longer have roots, we have aerials."
http://www.mcs.mq.edu.au/~mwark
 -- McKenzie Wark 

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