Being Digital

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Being Digital's front cover

Being Digital is a non-fiction computer science book by famed technology author Nicholas Negroponte. It was originally published in January 1995 by Vintage Publishing.

Being Digital provides a general history of several digital media technologies, many that Negroponte himself was directly involved in developing. Negroponte analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of the technologies (such as his belief that High-definition television wastes broadcasting power), and tries to predict how the technologies will evolve. Negroponte presents a strong belief that humanity is inevitably headed towards a future where everything that can will be digitalized (be it newspapers, entertainment, or sex). This leads Negroponte to a quote repeated often in promoting and explaining the book's material, that the book is made of "unwieldy atoms" that will probably be replaced by a digital copy by the time anyone reads the book. Several e-books exist of Being Digital, making the quote rather prophetic.