Lelia Green Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2002, 254 pp., $35.00, (paperback). The placing of a glossary at the beginning of the book is a good idea as it gives the reader an indication of the expected level of complexity of the text. The introduction presents the aim of the four topics of culture, society, technology and policy and their resulting permutations and combinations being interrogated and discussed. The references are thorough yet there are some curious inclusions and omissions. We have Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, but no Stephenson (Cryptonomicon), Gibson and Pat Cadigan, etc. There is Dale Spender, Donna Haraway, but no Sadie Plant, or Brenda Laurel. These are minor reservations. Also the inclusion of one A. Oakley with a fictional work entitled Housewife (1974) is something of a curiosity. There is no doubt that the VL the author alludes to is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, what with the explosion of such messaging centres as easyInternetCafe in Europe. It would have been interesting if the author had included some more anecdotal, microscale observations rather than more generic, global generalizations. Although difficult to ascertain, an attempt at categorizing attitude on the basis of ethnicity to the digital environment in a cultural rather than business sense would have helped. The author states this at the outset in the introduction, signalling an awareness of this parameter, yet some documentation, even anecdotal, would have been desirable. The author could have extended the scope of the discussion by travelling to a variety of environments to see technology being used in a cultural way, particularly in a non-business or academic environment by surveying the use of internet cafes in various countries to witness, first hand, the use of computer-mediated communication in a cultural context. The growth of Michael Mooretype digital `auteurs', the phenomenon of real-life-type TV shows in their various manifestations are recent developments that are worthy of inclusion. Other anthologized collections of writings of cyber-pundits cover some of the same ground but also draw directly on some of the authors referred to in the present text. Whilst they benefit from the multiplicity of perspectives, the gains in immediacy and impact are traded off against losses in synthesis and overall cohesion. The author's laudable aims of a comprehensive survey of the four given factors mean that there have been some resulting omissions and a dilution and theorizing of content. The preoccupation with language is evident here as elsewhere without the acknowledgement of its function as a vehicle for the expression of emotion, culture or whatever and not an end in itself. …