Deeper: My Two-Year Odyssey in Cyberspace

by John Seabrook

In Deeper, John Seabrook, a staff writer for the New Yorker, takes us along his personal journey down the information highway. In the beginning of this pioneering adventure into cyberspace, our hero (seabrook) is a clueless newbie. He ends up an old hand, complete with arrow wounds to show off.
When Seabrook is not narrating his own on-line adventures, he is writing an eyewitness history of a tumultuous period in the early history of a new medium, when the Net moved decisively from a geeky hobby to a part of mainstream popular culture. We meet major figures in the computer industry, catch the utopian feeling, get flamed, get laid, soar over the Net like Satan soaring over the Earth in Paradise Lost, join a virtual community and find out what daily life is like, lose the utopian feeling, adapt to the World Wide Web, and build a Web site.

Genres: Internet, Technology, Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1997

About the author

John Seabrook has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1993. The author of several books including Nobrow, he has taught narrative nonfiction writing at Princeton University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews

[Mason Masters · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first of a series of books about the internet I am reading. Seabrook is a well known journo and one of the first to document the new technology as it hit the masses. While I think at the time this would have been fresh and entertaining, this is quite a naive dive into the early communities of the web and it is quaint in hindsight. The novelty has worn off and every dark undertone Seabrook mentions has come to light. Overall it is entertaining enough with some nice pull quotes that really speak to the time, but it is not particularly deep.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a fascinating read, getting an inside look at the early days of the internet.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gosh, this takes you back . . . Seabrook re-lives that period which for many will pre-date our experience of the world wide web.

We follow his newbie exploits on-line, the great 'flame' wars and the early days of the web as we now know it.

Enjoyable in a harmlessly nostalgic way.

[tenderfoot]

Newer editions are subtitled "Adventures on the Net," but the original subtitle was "My Two-Year Odyssey in Cyberspace."

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

A confirmed technophobe, I was amazed to find myself fascinated by this book.