HOME SPEAKING FUTUROLOGY FICTION NON-FICTIONMEDIA/CONTACT

Digital Business: Surviving and Thriving In An On-Line World was an instant success when it was first published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1996. The hardback shot to the top of Dillon’s best-seller charts in the UK and the book was translated for Japanese and Chinese editions (both authorised and pirated).

The book was a belated follow-up to Ray Hammond’s 1984 volume, The On-Line Handbook, and it described how internet commerce had grown in the intervening twelve years.

The hardback edition of Digital Business also included a CD-ROM with Netscape Navigator and links to all of the companies, services and products mentioned in the text. Digital Business was the world’s first book to be published with a companion web site that allowed readers to read regularly updated editions of the text and follow new links.

Excerpts from Digital Business (1996):

"It is impossible to over-estimate how much the Net (and its descendants and variants, whatever they are or will be called) will alter life in the developed countries of the world. Every aspect of life will change for all but the most severely socially disadvantaged and within a decade, they too will start to feel its effect.

"It is not enough to think about individuals or individual computers linking via the networks. Humans don't have to be involved. Building will talk to building, conurbation to conurbation, dairy farm to milk silo, and video camera to police database.

"All such communications - which can include commands, requests, exchanges, controls, profit, loss, love and death - occur at close to the speed of light. The full ramifications cannot yet be discerned."