At first glance, 24 Hours in Cyberspace appears to be just another
coffee-table book out in time for the holidays, a follow-up to its profound
predecessor A Day in the Life of America, only this time, the slick
pages might be covered with poignant full-color photographs of international
business execs staring into the dim light of their computer screens. But how
can you judge a book by it’s cover when it comes with a CD-ROM and its own
website, too?
Though the project does contain some pictures of entrepreneurs, if they are
sitting in front of a computer it is usually a laptop in an unconventional
setting, like on the back of a Colorado taxi-cab in the middle of a snowy
night, or in a candle-lit abbey, where besides using the Internet to create a
lucrative document conversion business, resident monks rely on the World Wide
Web to sell fruitcakes from their homepage. Utilizing the online method of
recording realtime history that became the crux of the entire one-day project,
24 Hours in Cyberspace has ultimately provided us with the first
documented “big picture” of how the computer/Internet technology is changing
the way human beings conduct their lives.
A three-part venture consisting of the book, an included CD-ROM version of the
website (also featuring a quicktime computer video of a recent Nightline segment on the making of the multimedia project), and finally, the
photographically and editorially enhanced website itself
(http://www.cyber24.com), each medium serves a specific purpose. “The CD-ROM,
for example, gives the opportunity to those without a modem to experience our
website — Netscape and all,” explains veteran journalist Richard Smolan,
co-creator and project director of 24 Hours. “With the CD, the video
becomes the filter through which viewers see the photographs, while the book
uses the essays as a filter.”
Divided into sections such as “Human Touch,” “Earthwatch,” “Sex, Lies, and
Websites,” and “Open for Business,” the photographs in 24 Hours are
linked to computers and technology in a broad sense through their content, and
were then linked directly to each other via the Cyber 24 Website, as soon after
they were taken as the process allowed. (Interestingly enough, the website
project took about six weeks whereas the book took six months.) One entry
features a New York Theater group performing an off, off-Broadway piece
developed from Courtney Love’s online exchanges with fans. Another snapshot
captures a worker in the Documentation Center of the Cambodian Genocide
Program, an organization run from Yale University that is creating online
catalogues of evidence left behind by the Khmer Rouge that will help give names
to previously unknown victims. A cyber slice-of-life closer to home features
Austinite Layne Jackson, former art director for Girl Games, Inc., who served
as an online mentor to adolescent girls during one of the software company’s
outreach programs. And if you’re checking this stuff out on the website, each
photograph has a direct link to further information already out there
independently.
It’s obvious that the presence of the Internet drastically widened the scope
of the idea upon which the Day in the Life books were founded. “In this
project you can really connect with the caption,” says Smolan. “In the other
books, the caption was all you’d learn about the subject of the photograph.
Here, each picture becomes a door you can walk through.” So why choose the
printed page to attempt to capture a topic as ever-changing and indefinable as
the Internet? Smolan says that despite these new technologies, people still
like linearity. “Nobody is going to look at all 300 pictures on the website,
but they might actually get through the whole book.” Besides, he says he is
quite aware that even the current website and CD-ROM technology will soon be
outdated, pointing out the book’s subtitle, Painting on the Walls of the
Digital Cave, as an example — a reference to what once was the hottest
form of communication in town.
— Jen Scoville Rick Smolan will be signing copies of 24 Hours in Cyberspace at Borders Books
& Music on Thursday, Nov. 14, 7:30pm.
This article appears in November 15 • 1996 and November 15 • 1996 (Cover).