Wednesday, February 22, 2012

"Public Parts" by Jeff Jarvis

Took me a while to make it through it, but I a few days ago finished Public Parts by Jeff Jarvis.



I enjoyed quite a bit the prior Jarvis book What Would Google Do? and while I didn't get quite as much out of Public Parts, found it still to be an interesting read. Book carries the subtitle How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live and has some really solid content about how information is now exchanged. Jarvis writes about us living in the age of links and offers an examination and endorsement of Twitter that reminds me a great deal of the Clay Travis website post "2011 Belonged To Twitter, So Does the Future of Sports Media." Quite a few similarities in the extolling of Twitter's virtues, with the immediacy of news (such as on the Tahir Square events in Cairo, Egypt) being foremost.

Additionally, Jarvis examines the overarching question of public vs private and while it seemed to drag at times, did provide good historical context around things like the printing press as well as geographic context in looking at German push back against Google Street View mapping.

All in all, was a good book for those interested in public vs private as well as Information Technology (more to the point, Information Dissemination), where its at and where its headed.