He emphasises that the key is the digital storage of information and interestingly explores the way that the ambiguous categorisation of this information allows more creative relations to be found/ emerge.

Various technologies have come of age at the same time. Information rich world wide web pages are quickly readable because high speed telephone lines work well and computer storage is cheap and fast - as are mass market computer chips. Hypertext links lead to other fast machines and icon based screens and the diffuse nature of the internet invite low skilled users to easily contribute information as the aptly described "Web" grows at an enormous rate.

Furthermore, massive storage and speed almost unbelievably allows all this information to be searched in seconds for documents using   keywords and phrases in utilities such as Google. Try retrieving an article at this speed from the British Library!!

Weinberger shows that easy open access to digital information generates a two way street. The impossible becomes possible as a hard to find book can now be located and bought online in a few minutes through a powerful database, search and online payment. You can even post a review and engage in a useful evaluation of it with people you have never met.

This represents a big increase in efficiency and he sees a general increasing openness as suppliers and end users share information with some intermediaries like travel agencies for airline reservations losing their position altogether.

Information is seen as much more democratic and he shows the radical shift from the <authority - receiver> model exemplified by the Encyclopaedia  (top)

In fact an online community has created Wikipedia in the same way that a larger online community has created the world wide web. Out of the mass of digital information and high speed communication he shows how special interests can find each other and interact creatively in a website like www.librarything.com which happens to be one of my own favourites.

A main theme of the book concerns the categorisation of information showing that natural divisions (or joints) obviously exist but that the borderlines can be more fluid than previously thought. He quotes Charles Darwin from The Origin of Species, "..we shall have to treat species..... as artificial combinations made for convenience" in order to be free from the "vain search for the undiscovered and undiscoverable essence of the term species."

Tagging is see as providing meta data that in enough volume can form nodes of "natural" understanding of information though he points out that tagging is not growing a fraction of the pace of the early internet.

A weakness of the book could be that he doesn't explore information in the governmental context. What are the implications of citizens having much more information about their government and governments having much more information about their citizens? He does however interestingly note that there are emerging norms about the acceptable use of clickstream information.

He also only gives a brief mention of the machine intelligence possibilities of a "world digital memory" with its rapidly growing interconnectedness.

Overall a very interesting read.