Good Book Alert: 4 Stars for Circuits of the Wind: Volume 1

Circuits of the Wind: A Legend of the Net Age
Author: Michael Stutz
Genre: Literary Bildungsroman
Rating: 4 Stars

Circuits of the Wind is an intriguing coming-of-age story of both its main character and the Internet.

Summary:

Young Ray Valentine finds himself ?disconnected from his life. The purchase of a computer with a modem allows him to explore the growing virtual world connected by telephones and computers. As he delves deeper into this new world, he will have to balance his life both online and offline.

Review:?

We've come to take the commercial and personal Internet for granted. Even children carry around tiny mobile computing devices that can easily access vast amount of the world's information with ease, and yet we complain about the ability to quickly stream YouTube videos.

Back in the 70s and 80s, the 'net began its shift from being mostly a government and academic entity. With the spread of things like Usenet, bulletin board services(BBSes), and, for that matter, personal computers, cyberspace became the domain of everyone.

Circuits of the Wind explores the early years of both a young man interested in all things computer and computer networking related and the "early teen" years of cyberspace itself. The book forms the first volume of a trilogy that follows both Ray and the net from early Usenet and BBSes to the dot.com mania.?

The book is a psychological study of the kind of person who would want to spend hours a day chatting away and exploring on computer networks years before such things became?ubiquitous and fairly easy. Ray, like many early users, was as fascinated by the technology and techniques of the networking as the actual practical uses.

This intense focus will likely, however, ultimately divide readers. There is no grand plot here, just the growth and exploration of a young man and the technology that fascinates him. In particular, the interesting juxtaposition of people using a new communications technology to open up their options, yet still feeling isolated is something that resonates in this age of social networking. I found these subjects interesting enough, but readers looking for something a bit more plot-oriented or less interested in the early history of cyberspace may be?disappointed.

The writing style tends to be lyrical but verbose. In many books, this would had been distracting, but in this novel its effective, in that it does a good of reflecting the?analytic?mindset and detail-oriented focus of Ray.?

Source: http://goodbookalert.blogspot.com/2012/10/4-stars-for-circuits-of-wind-volume-1.html

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