The Internet and Everyone
by John Chris Jones
isbn 1 899858 20 2
592 pages
Published 2000 by oooEllipsis
www.ellipsis.com

The Internet and Everyone is a book about the Internet. It is also a
book about almost everything else. It is one of those texts that ranges
across subjects, points of view, opinions and events with an eclecticism
both inspiring and frustrating; inspiring in the way the author shows us
the connectedness of things. Frustrating in that we are unable to fully
explore any one element of the writers thoughts. The text makes and
breaks connections between things like a prose poem.

The Internet and Everyone was commissioned by the publishers as long ago
as 1995, and much of it first appeared on the web, at the publishers
website, some years ago (www.ellipsis.com/i+e/001.html). Its journey to
print was clearly a long one.

In many respects this text would be better read online, or at least as
an electronic hypertext. However, it is still the case that the "old
media" of print demands, and is by far the most successful means of
achieving, concentrated and structured reading. John Chris Jones's
approach to the writing of this book was clearly hypertextual. He
mentions in the forward his use of Cagean techniques such as randomising
chapter sequences, and he asks us, the reader, to contemplate what sort
of reader we might be and how we might want to approach this text
(linearly, randomly or by structured navigation). The author observes
that "the purpose of writing a book has now changed, for each one now
can be writing, and living, the book of her/his life" and sets himself
the task of writing just such a post-Derridean text.

The body of the book is structured as a series of twenty-five letters
written by the author to the publishers. Each letter has one or more
"attachments" (each letter was originally an email) that make up the
primary content, whilst the letters give us an insight into the author's
relationship to the texts and also function to create a deconstructive
distancing relative to the subject matter.

The book as a whole reads somewhat like a diary as the letters give us
such intimate access to the authors thoughts as he goes about his work.
The texts that these letters bind together range across a diverse and
often confusing range of subjects. Stylistically the writing has
something of the Victorian diarist's manner about it, and similarly the
content echoes the "cabinet of curiosities" approach to etymology.

Each of the "attachments" reflect on one of a diverse range of subjects,
such as the ergonomics of interface design, the textuality of email, the
experience of visiting a medical specialist, an interpretation and
critique of a contemporary dance performance and the hermeneutics of a
self-referential web of homepages. In a Kafkaesque sense the connections
between each of these and the many other subjects are clear. For
example, Jones implies a comparative critique between mechanical and
electronic manufacturing processes with the character of the doctors
surgery by placing "attachments" about each in proximity to one another.
Jones regards each as an example of an interface between people and
processes and it is here that what appear to be totally different
subjects are found to be the same. Reading this book we are very aware
that we are engaging with a very particular and singular writer.

In many respects this book is unfinished and unfinishable. As the author
points out, endings are not necessarily appropriate anymore. In the last
section of the text Jones admits he fears he has failed, that it was a
mistake to organise the texts as he has and to bind them together with
the letters to his publishers. He muses that he has abrogated his
authorial responsibility and obligations by choosing this route, where
he has had no need to impose a single coherent structure upon the text.

This might well be, but this reader cannot see that the author had much
choice in the matter. Any attempt to create such a singular text would
have failed in evoking any particular sense of its subject. In the end
The Internet and Everyone reads as a book that had to exist in the form
that it does.

The Internet and Everyone is probably the least needed book, the last
book one would regard as required reading, for understanding its subject -
and yet this book, whilst not essential, manages to suggest the essence
of the net and bring to us a sense of what we are becoming as we adapt
to living with/in this new medium. It is essential reading for anyone
who has found the net become an important part of their life.