Big Switch

The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google
$16.95
An excellent, fair, and critical look at the development of the Internet as a coming global utility - and what that means for the future of our society. Carr parallels the development of the World Wide Computer with changes in the way we used electricity and manufacturing, and suggests that internet service will become the utility of the future.

But what does that mean? Carr is also critical of the effects of that internet presence, both present and future. He points to the growing disparity between haves and have nots, based on the Internet's tendency to grow computing fortunes based on other people's creativity and labor without any further diminishing returns. Likewise, he examines the role of a "flattened" culture where anybody can put any creative work on the Web - but all of it sucks. Read Carr if you are at all interested in where our world is going and what it means - whether you like it or not, it's what's happening.

The Big Switch (Brian Kane Mysteries)
$15.95
Fun, sexy mystery set in the Hollywood noir of 1951. Private Investigator Brian Kane is hired by a star's wife to follow her husband and see if he's cheating, but someone else wants the incriminating pictures and has the gun to prove it. A starlet is murdered, then another, and the bodies start piling up. Everyone has a secret, and after Kane's call-girl-girl-friend gets involved, he takes it very personally. To make things even more interesting, the women find Kane irresistible, and so is this book. It was fun going back to the time before cell phones and all the high tech gizmos of today's PI's. The writing was clean and crisp and well suited to the time frame and story. This is good hard boiled crime fiction. And check out the sequel, The Deal Killer.