Science

RELEASE 2.0: A DESIGN FOR LIVING IN THE DIGITAL AGE. Esther Dyson. Viking. Pounds 15.99. - ISBN 0 670 87600 3.

This is the future according to the wired and wiry woman who swims by herself, somehow managing to stay a couple of lengths ahead of other thinkers without getting breathless. She is at her best when exploring how people will live life's mundane details when much of the economy has shifted onto the Internet. Her enthusiasm for markets is really a faith in self-regulating communities and minimal government. But her influence in high places is not complete: with the US administration proposing to snoop on the Internet but not to tax it, the score stands at Clinton 1, Dyson 1.