The Sustainable Network: The Accidental Answer for a Troubled Planet [Paperback]

If you want to better understand how the global network works, this book will interest you. If you want to know the implications of the network and how it may answer the world's problems, this book will disappoint you. The supposed point of the book--how the global communications network is the best sustainable technology to address the world's problems--is lost in a mountain of details about how the network operates. Throughout my excruciating experience reading this book, I kept asking, "Why do I need to know this?" I now better understand the path an email takes after I send it. So what? How does this help me understand how to use the global network to address society's problems? I did find useful suggestions for action included at the end of a few of the chapters. But any of the chapters that addressed the supposed premise of the book dealt with issues at a superficial level. I was hoping that this book would provide a thought-provoking read. Instead, I experienced reading this book as a mind-numbing chore.

How did we get here? This book is an attempt to bring you up to speed on what's happening in the interconnected world. For the "newbie" it is an excellent resource for educating one about the internet, how it works, how it is shaping our lives, and the dangers we face because we are interconnected more than we've ever been.

The author is a former employee of Juniper Networks, a major producer of the routers and switches that make up the "guts" of the internet. As an "insider" she has many helpful discussions about the many factors that shape the internet we use, its strengths and adaptiveness, its ability to survive major attacks, and its weaknesses that may place the data we transmit over it at risk. The book serves best as an omnibus of content for most any question you ever had about networks in general and THE network in particular.

The subtitle is "The Accidental Answer for a Troubled Planet." The implication I read is that through the networks we've created we'll be able to save our planet. That is a moot point. While the Internet is rapidly becoming the medium of choice for information sharing, it doesn't come without a price. As she states, the servers, routers, and switches that send information on its way require a steady stream of electrons for their operation, and at current rates of expansion, it is not clear that we'll be able to afford the electrical power plants that will continue to allow that expansion. This is one of the few books I've read that has addressed this particular energy problem in some depth.

A sampling of chapters that address current issues include:

What's So Smart About an Energy Grid?
Is Broadband Really That Important?
Net Neutrality
Political Sustainability
Rocking the Vote
Antisocial Network Engineering
Government's Role in Protecting the Network's Integrity
21st-Century Warfare: Cyberattacks
The Health Net
Not by Accident: Social Networking

As a prototypical nerd, I hope that she's correct in suggesting the Internet may be a major means of "saving" the planet, i.e. The Sustainable Network may become a model for the "Sustainable World." My nightmare is that human nature will remain rigidly rooted in its prehistoric "small group" past, and we'll continue to make decisions for the benefit of our small group, but decisions that lead to the degradation of the planet.

I am not in the tech industry but I am a big user and fan of technology. This book is a great examination of the profound impact that technology (the "network", wireless, etc.) has on our lives...It's really fascinating to have the author examine the environmental, political, social, and economic implications of the network. This book is great follow up reading to Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat and Crowded"...The Sustainable Network was highly educational and very interesting.