Journal of Law, Information and Science
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Journal of Law, Information and Science |
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BY TAPSCOTT, D, LOWY, A AND TICOLL, D, (ED)
McGraw-Hill, New York, 1998 $24.95 (USA); $35.95 (Canada)
This is an excellent book for anyone wanting to capture the look and feel and potential of E-Commerce. The chapters of this book are written by the leaders of some of the world's most powerful and influential corporations. The visions which are shared by these authors will leave readers in no doubt that E-Commerce is here to stay and that its impact on all aspects of business is and will continue to be profound.
The book is divided into four parts. The first part deals with the 'new rules of competition' in an era of E-business. These new rules involve new ways of doing business, new relationships with customers and new business models. As stated by the authors: "[T]he recent debates about intellectual capital (for which the sheet measures will, no doubt, soon be required by the SEC) reflect the growing appreciation that human know-how, intellectual assets, and the management of knowledge is a key requirement for success. …The fact is that our traditional ways of organizing ourselves as businesses have left us unable to deal with all the knowledge that organizations now accumulate. The capture, dissemination, application and retention of all these kinds of knowledge are what the learning organization is all about." (p. 6).
Industry transformations is the topic covered in part two. The authors argue that the old division of sectors into retail, financial services, manufacturing, education, etc have broken down. Boeing, for example, is as much a software producer as it is a maker of airplanes. Microsoft is now one of the largest travel agents with Expedia which had over $US 100 million in revenue in its first year. The chapters in this section analyse the transformation of a number of key industries, including financial institutions, higher education, publication, photographic and image industries.
Part three is entitled: "Enabling the Internetworked Enterprise". The focus is on the role of technology in creating new communities. The theme is that business today depends upon information networks just as our physical bodies depend upon a circulatory and nervous system to keep it functioning. These networks allow for the creation of new and virtual communities which forge new relationships which transcend traditional boundaries of space and time.
Part Four is entitled: "Governance in the Twenty-first Century. It explores the future of government in a cyber world and the role of government in regulating the Internet. While economic developments have resulted in a lot of 'globalisation', there has been far less achieved in the area of internationalisation, ie agreements between nation-states. Yet, if e-commerce is to realise its potential, it is crucial that nations cooperate and develop new arrangements which will provide the legal infrastructure which will facilitate international trade in goods and services.
In summary, this is an important and thought provoking book by some of the world's leaders in a global world and information age.
Review by Eugene Clark, Professor of Law, University of Canberra.
BY PAUL LEVINSON
Routledge, London, 1999, pp 226, ISBN 0-41519251X, $49.95
Paul Levinson finishes Digital McLuhan with the words “Read McLuhan, read books and essays about his work, … and decide for yourself…”’. If this final sentence contains the measure of success of the book it is a failure. While Levinson certainly brings Marshall McLuhan’s (1911 -1980) work into the future, as is his declared aim, and shows McLuhan’s relevance and regained credibility in the digital age, he does not quite convince that McLuhan is the brilliant media theorist (who the author clearly believes he was) and a must-read. Rather, given McLuhan’s unorthodox writing style, acknowledged by the author, and his delight in picturesque metaphors on the effects of media, followed by his refusal to lift the veil of mystery surrounding them through clear explanation, it appears that all but the most enthusiastic should stay away from McLuhan in the original. Even Levinson’s sympathetic attempt to excuse his mentor by portraying him as the ‘reluctant explicator’ (Chapter two) who devoted his life to coming up with glorious ideas, leaving the explaining, testing and criticism of them to others, is not entirely persuasive. Would not McLuhan himself - at least in the security of his own mind - have tested the strength of his ‘discoveries’ by exposing them to arguments and counter-arguments?
Be that as it may, Digital McLuhan is fortunately the brainchild of someone who believes in the value of explanation of ideas and as such successfully provides an insightful treatise on the digital revolution and how it fits into the broader picture of media evolution. Like Levinson’s history of media and communication technologies - from the alphabet to the Internet - in The Soft Edge (1997), this book offers valuable lessons not only to those who have a specific interest in media studies but for all those who attempt to make sense of the new era. For those concerned with the legal challenges of the media revolution this book clarifies and explains the origins and nature of some of these legal problems and points to the likely pitfalls in solving them. For example, the examination of McLuhan’s idea of the “global village” in Chapter six and of how this metaphor rings even more completely true, more than 30 years after its ‘invention’, in the age of the Internet is instructive to any legal inquiry into the jurisdictional issues arising out of online behaviour. It certainly helps to put outcries about new jurisdictional entanglements into perspective and to show what exactly what makes the Internet so novel in globalisation terms. Similarly, Levinson’s exploration of the fate of the centre in Chapter seven - “Centres everywhere, margins nowhere” - also illuminates the recent equivalent debates in legal circles about the challenges caused by the loss of traditional intermediaries and decentralisation.
Yet another example of how an open multidisciplinary perspective can enrich all perspectives lies in Levinson’s discussion of the “rear-view mirror” in Chapter 14, which draws on McLuhan’s statement that “[w]e look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.” Once it is appreciated, thanks to Levinson, that the tendency to see and evaluate new media in terms of the already known, is fundamental in helping us to come to terms with new media, the many judges who, in recent cases, have compared the Internet with magazines or letters[1] may be judged more leniently for their apparent short-sightedness. The necessity as well as the dangers of the rear-view mirror, whether in media or legal studies, are encapsulated in the colourful statement that
‘[i]f we stare too long into the rear-view mirror, focusing only on how the new medium relates to media of the immediate past, we may crash head-on into an unseen, unexpected consequence. On the other hand, if we look only straight and stiffly ahead, with no image or idea of where we’re coming from, where we’ve just been, we cannot possibly have a clear comprehension of where we are going.’ (at 176)
Levinson then himself applies this to electronic ink on electronic paper, concluding that using just a rear-view mirror suggests that such ink and paper is the perfect improvement on traditional ink on traditional paper in terms of revisability and convenience. However, upon closer analysis it is clear that they do not provide the continuity and security of traditional ink and paper. Would such an analysis not inform current legal discussions on the integrity of electronic contracts? In short, Digital McLuhan should be very interesting even to those not devoted to media studies or who are not passionate McLuhan fans.
Digital McLuhan appropriately lets McLuhan’s more or less famous metaphors such as ‘The medium is the message’, ‘light-through/light on’, ‘hot and cool’ or ‘we have no art, we do everything well’ guide the organisation of the book. Thus various aspects of media generally and its specific application in the Internet context form the 15 chapters of the book. While some of the discussion in the book overlaps with that of The Soft Edge, the latter followed a chronological order which not only let the reader glide smoothly through centuries of media development but also was more transparent; and Levinson’s headings in Digital McLuhan, although colourful, are not always immediately instructive as to the content of the chapter. For example, who could have guessed that the fifth chapter, entitled “Online Angels”, discusses personal identity online, virtual sex and deception and the intrinsic fallibility of machines - a chapter you would not want to miss. But this lack of guidance from the table of contents is partially remedied through the very detailed index which also makes the book a useful reference text long after the initial reading.
McLuhan’s metaphors provide useful starting points for Levinson to explore several, and often interrelated effects of media. Beyond those already mentioned, there is the phenomenon that the characteristics of a particular medium often only become apparent when it is replaced by another medium (see Chapter three). Chapter four deals with the question of how visual and acoustic space differ and whether cyberspace is more a visual or acoustic medium. In Chapter eight, media, which rely on light shining on them, such as print or paintings, are contrasted with more ‘illuminating’ and involving media, which rely on light shining through them, such as TV or personal computers. McLuhan’s distinction of hot and cool media, whether the distinction makes sense and is valuable and which medium is what, is analysed in Chapter nine. While the discussion is thought-provoking, I was never quite convinced that this was not “the epitome of an interesting distinction blown well beyond its importance” (at 96) Chapter 10 explains the demise of the traditional powerful gatekeepers, whether in the shape of the church, governments, publishers, editors or bookstores. Levinson suggests that censorship which traditionally has been at least practically made necessary by the limits of physical space available, gives way in the vastness of cyberspace to evaluation, endorsement and matchmaking, as illustrated by the online bookstore amazon.com. However, it could also be argued that these new selection procedures are another form, albeit more subtle, of censorship.
In the next chapter Levinson discusses how the computer and the Internet have further blurred the boundaries between private and public space, office and home, and work and play, and the social consequences of these shifting boundaries. This is followed by an analysis of how a medium slowly ascends to art when newer media at least partially replace it. The author uses the unlikely but perfect examples of convertibles and delicacies to illustrate the process and the reasons for it. Chapter 13 considers whether aspects such as the greater speed and reach of the Internet in comparison to previous information channels do actually lead to an improvement of our ways of life. The answer has to be: yes and no.
In the final chapter Levinson concludes by introducing the reader to McLuhan’s tetrad or laws of media, according to which four questions can be asked about every medium: What does it enhance? What does it render obsolete? What does it retrieve from the past? What does it reverse into? While these questions are no doubt useful analytic tools, Levinson’s own media theory is certainly at least as instructive and enlightening, if not superior to that of his master. The author’s “anthropotropic theory” of media is that media evolve, analogous to biological species, with human beings selecting for survival the media most appropriate to their needs and those that tend to increase “consonance with pre-technological human communication modes, while maintaining their extension across time and space…” (at 185).
Finally, unlike many other academic, and in particular legal, writers, Paul Levinson is entertaining. So, even those who do not expect that Digital McLuhan will advance their professional or general knowledge, may be persuaded to give it a try on the basis of lines like “But there is more to human life than sex.” (at 60). Just don’t try sleeping with your computer.
Review by Uta Kohl, Postgraduate at University of Canberra.
BY SURENDRA DAYAL AND SANDRA DAVEY
(Sydney: Butterworths, 1998)
The rapid expansion of electronic research materials over the last few years has transformed the study of law and posed new challenges, not only for students and teachers in universities, but also for practising lawyers. It has been suggested recently in the media that lawyers may be liable in negligence if they give their clients faulty advice in cases where they have allowed themselves to remain ignorant of the new technologies, and the access to the latest legal developments which they provide. This warning has again focused attention on the vital importance of one of the most basic legal skills: the ability to find the law.
The shift from paper to electronic storage of legal materials has provided two inestimable advances to the legal researcher. First, there is the vastly increased access to legal information. Second - and more importantly – we now have the means to conduct specific, sophisticated searches of this information. It is no longer necessary to rely on the indexing skills of others when trying to locate a particular case, article or statute, because the ability to search the material is placed into the hands of every person who has access to the technology and has learned how to use it.
This explosion in computerised research products has complicated the task of legal researchers and educators, but happily, since 1996, finding the law by electronic methods has been made much easier because of the existence of LDL Online, now in its third version. The yearly editions of LDL Online have been necessitated by the rapid changes in the amounts of information being made available, the amalgamation of service providers, and the continual improvements in graphical user interfaces. Each edition has collected into one useful volume most of the assistance that the legal researcher could wish for. In my own case, my annotated copies of LDL Online have replaced a whole filing drawer filled with the various guides and manuals for each of the individual products which I use.
The latest book is divided into four parts. The first part covers the basics of computer searching techniques and provides a brief overview of the different information services and the materials they contain. LDL Online 1998 does not attempt to cover general searching techniques in any great detail – the topic is dealt with in just eleven pages. Rather, the focus is on helping researchers to find their way around the modern legal research software packages. Consistent with this aim, the remaining three parts of the book contain a detailed practical guide to the mainstream services now available. Each chapter is task oriented and uses screen shots to show the beginner how to search for cases and legislation, how to navigate within the products, and the way to print or download material once it has been found. The software packages covered in LDL Online1998 are grouped together under the following three headings: Specific Text Services, Folio Views CD-Rom Publications, and The Internet, and are detailed below.
There are separate chapters on Diskrom [which covers Commonwealth and State legislation and case law, and includes, amongst other items, Hypercite, the Australian Legal Literature Index and Online Tax News] and Lexis-Nexis [the largest of all the databases which contains an enormous range of local and international primary and secondary sources].
The Folio Views products covered in this part include the Australian Legal Research Library, comprising Halsbury’s Laws of Australia, Australian Current Law, Australian Legal Words and Phrases, Statutes Annotations and Casebase. The LBC products including The Laws of Australia, The Australian Digest and The Australian Legal Monthly Digest and the Australian Case Citator are also found in Part III.
This is the largest part of LDL Online and covers the World Wide Web, with advice on how to use the most popular browsers [Netscape Navigator/Communicator and the Internet Explorer], the plugin Adobe Acrobat, as well as advice and examples of how to use e-mail [Eudora], mailing lists and discussion groups. The websites covered in Part IV are AustLII, Foundation Law, Butterworths Online and SCALEplus.
The beauty of LDL Online 1998 is that it is comprehensive, inexpensive, and is a good resource not only for the independent learner, but also for classroom teaching. The provision of headings, screen shots, summaries and exercises within each chapter makes the material very easy to use – once you have found the appropriate chapter. This can be a problem, because the headings at the top of each page identify only the part of the book, and not the individual chapters. Rather than telling the reader that they are in “Part II – Specific Text Services” or “Part III – Folioviews CD-ROM Publications” it would be much more helpful if the page headings referred to the specific products covered by each chapter, eg “Lexis-Nexis” or “Butterworths Online”.
Another problem for the user of electronic research materials is the fact that the services themselves are constantly changing. This means that the need for new versions of LDL Online is unavoidable, and though this is not the fault of the authors, it is frustrating for the researcher. Fortunately, once you have developed the skills, it is possible to skip a year or two and do without the latest version of the guidebook. At their base the methods are very similar and most changes are cosmetic, so once you have grasped the underlying structure of the materials and the basic workings of the search mechanisms, you need not be thrown by a change in looks. I look forward, however, to the day when the paper version of LDL Online is supplemented by an online service or website giving details of the latest changes to the service providers and their products.
Once the technical details have been mastered – or explained in a book like LDL Online 1998 - the challenge becomes that of how to develop advanced searching skills. The authors make a number of helpful suggestions in Part I, including the advice that researchers should never assume they have found everything the first time around and should develop the habit of using different approaches to check their initial results. I add to that the suggestion that you jot down somewhere in your book the searches that you have used which have been the most useful and the ways you have found to narrow down your searches without losing completeness of coverage. I also suggest that researchers do not assume that the printed information about product currency is up to date, and should make time to check these when opening each new database.
It is best to start with one or two services and master them before moving on to others. Butterworths Online or AustLII are good choices for the beginner as they both use the familiar Internet interface. Once you are tuned in to computer searching methods it is not difficult to learn new systems, especially with the guidance of a book like LDL Online. I suggest that beginners using this book try starting with more general searches and learn ways of increasing the sophistication of their searches as they develop familiarity with the technical features of the products. Though more time consuming, the more general search often yields fortuitous discoveries and can replicate the pleasant experience of chancing upon something of marginal relevance which is one of the pleasures of browsing in a paper library. This is a feature that many of us miss when using electronic research tools. Often it is the case or article that is not directly on point which can suggest a profitable line of thinking or a slightly different spin on a familiar problem, and this means that the extra time spent going though your search results need not necessarily be wasted.
There are two good ways to learn how to use the wealth of computerised materials now available to the legal researcher. One is to have personal tuition from someone who is willing to sit patiently for hours and share their knowledge. The better way is to teach yourself how to find the information by practising these skills in the comfort and privacy of your own office or library work-station with a book like LDL Online 1998 as a guide. With this book you can work at your own pace without being embarrassed by any mistakes you make, and without having to rely on others for help.
When I first started to use computers I was reluctant to experiment, but I learned a lot from observing my children fearlessly exploring our home computer and playing with its features, while I lingered back, afraid to make a mistake or venture into uncharted territory without assistance. LDL Online 1998 can give a beginner confidence to try out these addictive new methods of legal research and avoid most of the frustration which can come when trying to acquire new computer skills. My advice to those who are unfamiliar with the new technology is to get hold of a copy of the latest version of LDL Online and start practising, because the advances in computer technology and electronic research methods will not stop. Legal academics and practitioners who do not make the time to master these new techniques will be left without the skills to take control of the ‘means of production’ of legal information. Consequently, they, their students, and their clients, risk becoming casualties of the information revolution.
Review by Julia Davis, Lecturer in Law, University of Tasmania.
[1] This is particularly obvious in US jurisdictions which have already built up a considerable body of case law on Internet-related legal issues. See for example, Maritz, Inc v Cybergold, Inc, 947 F Supp 1328 (ED Mo) (analogy to postal mail); Hearst Corp v Goldberger No 96 CIV 3620 PKL (SDNY Feb 26,1997) (analogy to national magazines); Telco Communications v An Apple A Day Inc, 977 F Supp 404 (ED Va 1997)(analogy to letters).
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