BY now students doing real science will find that Internet-literacy is as essential as the old-fashioned kind. Not knowing how to track down information may already be as fatal as not knowing how to walk to the library. Gail Clement has converted the Internet training programme she runs at Florida International University into book form, Science and Technology on the Internet (Library Solutions Press, Berkeley and San Carlos, California, $45, ISBN 1 882208 13 7). The result will be invaluable.
But series coordinator Anne Lipow is too optimistic in her claim in the preface that 鈥測ou really do not ever need to touch a keyboard鈥� to use this book. One difficulty of introducing people to Internet services is that, to understand, you have to be there. A description of hypertext in linear text is as informative as a textual description of song 鈥� it doesn鈥檛 help you to sing.
Clement is fortunate in that she can assume an inquisitive and deductive audience, eager to learn from mistakes. She is able to present the 鈥渞eal鈥� Internet 鈥� based on the Unix operating system 鈥� its conception of the world as a stream of text, and a concept of the function of communication as the advancement of knowledge.
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