Blueprint to the Digital Economy: Creating Wealth in the Era of E-Business

Charles R. Crawford, a former associate professor of computer science at
York University, is a computer-programming and mathematics consultant.

Many of the 20 essays in this book reflect the particular ideas and
issues that were prevalent in surveys of the high-tech world in
1997–98. For example, “Banking Without Boundries,” by Lloyd
Darlington of the Bank of Montreal, seems to be a 26-page brief on the
issue of Canadian bank mergers. Other essays present strategies for
building or rebuilding a business using new information-related
technologies, particularly the Internet.

The best essays in the collection focus on a particular idea (such as
“Center and Periphery” by Mark Weiser and John Brown of Xerox PARC)
or a particular technology (such as digital photography in “Pictures
in the Digital Economy” by Carl Gustin of Kodak). The latter essay is
the best in the collection. Gustin does not present the new technology
as a “win–win” strategy, but makes it clear that digital
technology applied to the general consumer snapshot market requires a
careful trade-off between the clarity and realism of conventional film
images and the speed and convenience of processing and sharing digital
images.

Many of the essays, however, are filled with jargon and do not include
examples or detailed case histories. There is an index, but it may have
been prepared from an early draft, since some page references are wrong
or refer to passages apparently removed in editing.